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Dimension 5150 not reading DVD's - MORE HELP PLEASE ........!!
I've had my Dimension 5150 for over three years (just out of lease / warranty) and I have not used it to view DVD's until now. I wanted to load new software to copy VHS tapes to DVD's which came with a DVD installation disc and when the DVD is loaded the drive looks at it but does nothing and does not recognise the disc. I have set the DVD Region to Region 2 for United Kingdom. I have also followed the Dell troubleshooting advice and downloaded the latest driver (which was the same version installed but I loaded it anyway in case mine had been corrupted) but to no avail. A troubleshooting guide did mention that if a drive is not used for a certain purpose for a while it can 'forget' it exists. Drive works okay with CD RW. There are two drivers listed in the drive hardware properties (WDC WD2500JS-75NCB1 Disc Drives) and (HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GWA4164B DVD/CD-ROM drives).
I would very much appreciate any suggestions before I embark on a costly investigation and repair.
IJimmy
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August 12th, 2016 23:00
Hello Osprey. . .thanks for spotting my S.O.S.
Good to hear from you on my mystery CD/DVD drive.
I followed up on your suggestions.plus tried more sleuthing on my own. Here are the results :
1. When I click on the "D" drive in the folders list in 'My Computer' (I guess this is the equivalent to 'file explorer that you mentioned) there is no message asking "...to insert a disc..". When I try a CD and in Windows MediaPlayer, when I select the 'Play' tab the drop-down menu shows "DVD,VCD or CD Audio". Clicking on this the play jumps back to the first track. With no CD this menu item is shaded out as not available.
2. Going via the 'folders' list under 'My Computer', and with the movie DVD in the drive, nothing happens and if I Left-click on the Drive Letter (D) and eventually the "not responding" notification comes on at the top of the screen — I have to go to the 'Task Manager' to get out of this bind and back to the beginning. This leads to the small window appearing about a need to notify Microsoft with an 'error report' — which I do, If I Right-Click on the Drive Letter hoping to to obtain the small drop-down menu with 'Properties' as an item, nothing happens — just a blank screen, followed by the "not responding" , etc as before. All this time the small light at the CD/DVD drive just keeps blinking.
If I remove the movie DVD, I can then obtain the drop-down menu with the 'Properties', etc. by Right-clicking. If I Left-click with an EMPTY drive D nothing happens (just a blank screen, but no hangup and no "not responding" notification and no "insert disk " notification".) . . . As a comparison, Left-clicking the Floppy Disk Drive (A), when empty, I get the "insert disk" message.
3. Today, to add to the confusion, if I place a data CD (e.g. my 'DELL Resources' disc) I get nothing (as with the DVD). No way to view the list of files or anything else. I tried this with just a routine drop-disc-into-tray, close and wait, and also by the 'manual' method of going through the 'My Computer' folders list and selecting drive"D".
4. Further to the above, today playing a CD successfully was only possible by using 'RealPlayer'. Windows Media Player and VLC would result in the audio cutting in and out.
What do you think of all this ? Is there a possibility that the different media players are in conflict or is it all an indication of the drive becoming more worn out than me ?
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Best regards. . . JIM
osprey4
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August 14th, 2016 11:00
Hi Jim,
Ok, that's helpful. Click the link below to my troubleshooting guide (which I really need to update). Try running the Dell diagnostics from the F12 utility partition. Try the READ test with a data CD (not audio), and then again with a DVD.
IJimmy
6 Posts
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August 15th, 2016 15:00
Hello again Osprey . .
Thanks for all the help info covered in your above reply .. .I see you are hard at it even on Sundays helping poor souls like me.
At this moment I am running a McAfee scan on the DELL 'Resources' disc' just to ensure that it has not picked up anything undesirable or become corrupted — since I have tried it a few times in read trials and re-installations until it finally it was not being 'read' (to at least see the list of files as described in my previous post). This is taking a very long time — but, at least it is being read by the scan procedure !! When completed, I shall follow-up on your latest suggestions and fill you in on the results.
Although mostly keeping an eye on the Rio olympics yesterday, a bit of further experimenting with the CD/DVD drive mystery produced curious results:
a) Right-clicking, followed by 'Properties' on the 'desktop short-cut' for drive "D" results in a window saying to the effect ".,, the target cannot be found.." Yet the 'target' is shown as" D:\ " (same presentation as when this is tried with drive "A" and is what is shown in the 'My Computer' folder/file list..
b) If I try this exercise to reach "D" by going to "MY Computer" , as described in the previous post I get a blank screen and eventually, the "not responding" message because of a time-out in the loading process. However if I hold down , left-click the "D" drive icon and drag it to my desktop, the normal small menu window can be right-clicked to open and "properties" selected with no complications....all this , of course, with no disc in the drive tray: the presence of a disc causes the same hang-up as described previously, including no 'read' of a CD-data disc.
Will be back with news following experimentation with the F12 procedure (I used this at one point as a check-up during my floundering around after finding my computer knocked to its knees by the ransom-type virus it picked up and that started all this current mess). Your Tool Box' guidance will also be applied where applicable — read through it and it sounds very thorough, congratulations on the thought and effort involved in assembling it.
Regards. . . Jim
IJimmy
6 Posts
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August 19th, 2016 22:00
Hi Osprey . . .
As always it is a pleasure to have your ear to talk to about my woes !
My long absence in getting back with the results of trying out your Trouble Shooting Guide is that I did that — and some more. Your Trouble Shooter is a great solid starting point and covers pretty well all the basic angles.
The conclusion, for the moment, is that a defective physical drive seems to be the main "Problem" (source) causing all my "Symptoms" (works sometimes and only on some media — sometimes — but not all audio or data CD's, movie or music DVD's). There is still a possibility that the software may be imperfect. But testing will have to wait until I obtain and install a new drive.
For your information and possible help to others in similar predicaments, here are the highlights of my "adventures" that started with your Optical Drive Troubleshooting Guide (my exploits represent many tedious hours of trials and re-starts, more searching and reading, etc.).
A) The F12 'Custom' test for a CD-ROM in the drive identified everything as "Pass" except for "Reading". After receiving too many Error messages similar to those below and with only 13% of the "Read" test completed, I aborted.
error code 0F00:021E Msg: Block 27806: Reset or Medium changed ...or
" " 0F00:021B " " 16956: Flaw in medium or an error in the recorded data. If this is a removable media device, try different media ...or
" " 0F00:0232 " " 31681: Timeout waiting for IRQ
NB: The CD-ROM's that I used (and changed when the error message suggested trying a new medium) were my two DELL Drivers & Utilities CD's, "Dimension and XPS Resource CD" and "Reinstalling V.9X(Capable) /56K Telephony Data/Fax/Voice Modem Software for Microsoft Windows"). Inspite of te error messages, they are both in perfect condition — I hope they still are ! Hopefully the exercise or previous trials attempting to read them (display contents) have not created file damage/corruption.
B) In this F12 System Test program, the CD/DVD drive testing screen indicates that the mouse is inactive during this test, but, in my case, the pointer was inactive in all the tests available in the System Tests. It was "frozen" in the center of the screen — I could only go up and down and in the reverse direction of physical mouse movement and nothing could be clicked. The only available controls were the Enter and arrows on my keyboard. My mouse is a Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000 (it has a "zoom" feature and ability to scroll sideways).. Replacing with the original supplied by DELL, everything was as supposed to be — so, while in the test program, I tested that mouse — "Passed".
C) Testing a DVD the results were even worse — nothing could be "read", and the same type of error message posted right from the beginning.The "seek" test, etc did not produce results. I tried movie and also music DVD's.
D) At this point, going to the "Downloads" mentioned in item 2.1 of your Guide did not produce anything usable and the "Fix-It" Utility led to a Microsoft listing of handy downloads for troubleshooting called "Microsoft EasyFix Solutions" that replaces "Fix-It", but does not contain files ( .msi files) that apply to Windows XP. The whole list ( .diageb files) is for later Windows versions. This is the situation after a very well described procedure with images on how to download and use troubleshooter downloads from the list plus explanations that there were two types of files, etc — however, the type for WinXP must have been eliminated at some point and the descriptions not corrected.
E) All this exercise somehow got me into the DELL web page and finding a Support section that I have never seen before... hope was rekindled when I discovered that its features would take my Dimension 5150 model and use the recent test results to come up with recommended corrections. I quickly clicked the appropriate button and, when it was all over, things struck me as being much for the better — there had been things uninstalled and others installed. Next day I tried everything out. Audio CD's that had not played well (sound wavering or cutting in and out, or some tracks not playing) were OK. However, CD-ROM.s like the DELL ones used in the tests above, plus other installation CD's for monitor, mouse, digital camera, etc and both movie and music DVD's were failures. It was as if the drive just could not detect the media nor its content — the CD tray was even opening up and messages appearing asking to insert media when the media was already there in the tray !
F) During all the DELL Support evaluation , etc that occurred in (E) above, a desktop shortcut got installed to the 'DellAssist' Utility (this is new to me) that allowed another evaluation of the CD/DVD drive. It was quickly given a categorical "Failure" mark.....and that is it !
Osprey.... I hope all this will at least be of help to others in order to avoid the long hours that I have spent and all the time of yours that I have taken up. I certainly appreciate the guidance derived from your Guide, ToolBox, etc and your pointers in this post. I guess you inspired me to do a lot of sleuthing that I have appreciated from an educational point of view, even though it was tedious and long.
The DellAssist utility appears to be something made of gold — strongly recommended !! ...... Easy and quick to use. Many different things can be handled with this.
A few questions that I hope will not burden you too much, before I close up for the evening:
1) The descriptions that I ran across in these recent searches and trials did not clearly point out whether I have and IDE or a S ATA interface with my current CD/DVD drive. Apart from opening up the 'tower' to look at the connection, is there a place in the files that categorically says which interface is being used, or would both connections be available and even if it is currently an IDE, I could purchase a S ATA drive and install with no hangups ?. From what I see with DELL and others, the S ATA drives are more plentiful
2) Is the S ATA drive preferable to the IDE ?
3) Is there a question of compatibility with the Dimension 5150, or will any, presumably S ATA drive work? The current drive is described in the hardware section in Windows as just a "standard drive" — but with the new-to-me DellAssist Utility I was finally able to find out that the manufacturer was Hitachi-LG.
4) The move that I did not try, because of the more visible 'hardware' failure, was the 'removal of upper and/or lower filters'. Do you think I should try it anyway?
In the instructions it is mentioned to back-up the Registry. Could you step me through this procedure ? From what I can see in the folder listing in 'My Computer', it would mean backing-up 'My Computer'. Also, should the files in question be simply deleted or given another name to isolate them and keep them available if needed to re-install ?
Looking forward as much as ever to your reaction and answers, I'll call this a day.
Best regards,
JIM
IJimmy
6 Posts
0
June 21st, 2019 14:00
SOLUTION.....up-date to string on subject problem.
Having come back to this page after a long absence, this entry provides the solution to my problem and serves to close the topic. Install a new CD/DVD drive...! I had to go the route of the SATA drive with a Startech adapter plugged on to it that is a very simple and quick interface to enable connecting the IDE cable harness in my computer to the new cd/dvd drive...everything went like clockwork and works perfectly.....many thanks again to 'Osprey' forhis patience and guidance