i had a similar dvd problem....it wouldnt reconize anything....so i'm like wtf....uninstalled the drivers, xp reinstalled...didnt work....found the latest driver, uninstalled it, installed the new driver....didnt work....so i was like to hell with it...i happen to have a program cd in it i was trying to make it read at the time it was adobe photoshop....so like a month later i turned on the pc and the dvd player activated the autoplay feature and the dvd worked....i dunno what happened or how it repaired itself.....havent had a problem in months....

it was a dell pc with there standard noisy pos _NEC DV 5800....i have a TDK DVD burner I think when the NEC craps out i'm gonna get a TDK dvd player....

 

One thing that came to mind is that you might have gotten the lense on the laser dirty, since it's been sitting in your basement for a while. I had a similar problem with my playstation 2 not reading DVD's. Turned out a little rubbing alcohol and a q-tip on the lense fixed it right up. But I have no idea where to point you to show you how to take the drive apart.

 

I have a NEC DVD burner that works great. Not to flame, but if you get the TDK DVD, it's probably made by NEC, as evidenced by the hacked firmwares that are available, it says "based on the NEC 1300A recorders"


http://www.herrie.org/modules.php?na...oad&cid=10#cat

I would also recommend trying to clean the lens, if possible.

http://www.verbatim.com.au/products.cfm?productID=41838

 

maybe it is made by NEC but the quality is ALOT better....its 50x quieter running and opening and closing.....but its also newer, so maybe the new NEC's are equal in quality....

 

Sorry for the delayed response - was out of town on vacation for the last week.

Thanks... I'll see what I can do to get the lens cleaned.

 

I used one of those old school lens cleaners - the CDs with the little brushes on them (I had one laying around, so I thought I'd give it a shot). It worked, and I'm backing up DVDs as I type.

Thanks guys - I owe ya.

 

Glad to hear it.

 

wow, ill have to try this...hopefully it will work for me too..

 

did the disk cleaning thing, and still it does not recognize dvds..i think a larger problem is at hand..damn..

 

try blowing in it like an old nintendo game....

 

Another thing came to mind about cleaning the lense. Be careful what you use, because you don't want to scratch it. CD lenses and DVD lenses are two different things. DVD's need a much more focused laser to read the disc. So smaller imperfections on the lense can affect this much more than you'd think. So a lense cleaner for a CD player might not be the best thing to keep using for a DVD player. I'm sure one time won't hurt, but it's probably best to get one made specifically for a DVD player. I, myself, always prefer to crack the drive open and use a q-tip with rubbing alcohol. There's no better or safer way to do it.

 

As a hardware technican that is constantly fixing Dell's what happens most of the time is the secondary lens that is for DVD's burns out and it only plays CD's or vise versa only DVD's.
The CDRW DVD combo drives constantly go bad some more than others. Most of the other problems I see is really dirty drives that they have no clue they actually have to clean these things and haven't been cleaned since they owned the pc or they have small children jamming foreign things into the drives.