Cd Rom/Dvd burner problem

I am having a problem with my Cd rom/dvd burner. My computer used to recognize dvd movies, blank dvds and copied dvds. Now my computer is having trouble recognizing all of them. sometimes it wont recognize and dvd movie and sometimes it will. It wont recognize a blank dvd or a copied dvd. I am not sure what is wrong or if I have to buy a new drive. My driver is a Philips DVD+RW DVD8701.

Cleaned: LDT
HJT log

Greetings.

First off I would uninstall the drive in your Device Manager then reboot. This will force XP to redetect the drive and reload the drivers.

Right click My Computer then click Manage then Device Manager. Click the + next to DVD/CD ROM Drives. Right click on your drive and choose "Uninstall". Then restart your computer.

If the problem persists:

Do you have any third party burning software installed? If yes: then try reinstalling it.

If the problem persists try this codec pack:

http://www.free-codecs.com/k_lite_Codec_Pack_download.htm

My guess is the lens is dirty, get and run a lens cleaner and see if that helps, you can get them in a few places, even supermarkets sometimes stock them, they are a CD with brushes on, and a bottle of liquid IIRC, put a drop of liquid on each brush (or whatever it instructs you to do in the literature) then run it as it instructs you to, if that doesn't help the lens may be so dirty it could take a few goes to do it, alternately it may be beyond cleaning in this fashion, worst case get a new drive, they are so cheap these days it's the simplest way if basics don't work, hope you get it sorted.

I tried the link and that didn't work. It said i needed to insert a disk when there was one in the drive. It is mainly my computer that is not detecting the dvds.

Did you uninstall the drive? Did you reinstall any third party software? XP never had a native DVD capability.

yes, i uninstalled and reinstalled the drive. i uninstalled and reinstalled my burning program.

You might also try the following:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

If that does not help try a cleaner as suggested by 8210GUY or else a new drive.

$25 USD is about the standard price these days.

Well, i already tried the link and that didn't work. So i will try to clean the drive. Thanks for the help. 8210GUY, thanks for the help too.

No problem. Let us know how it goes.

NP, seen many an issue such as this, often people are confused why they can use Cd's but not DVDs (or vice versa), that is because they have 2 lenses, 1 for the DVD and 1 for the CD, so if one works and the other doesn't it's almost always down to a dirty lens, hope you get it sorted anyway.