Not quite sure whats wrong all of a sudden, but tonight when i was trying to burn a disk using alcohol 120% and i got an error about the cue file. AFter that, for some reason there was absolutely no power to the drive, the door wouldn't even open. So, i restarted, and it started working. AFter that it wouldn't read any disks, whether with stuff on them or blank. So i uninstalled the drivers, and restarted the computer, and as always, windows xp reinstalled it automatically. Although the device manager shows the drive, it still isn't reading any disks. BTW It's a Lite-ON DVDRW LDW-411S Not sure whats wrong =( anyhelp would be greatly appreciated. btw, i checked their website, theres no other drivers for it

Hi 1st check your aspi drivers are ok , http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/common/searchresults.html?language=English+US&support=support&queryText=aspi www.adaptec.com ,download the xp aspi pack & run chkaspi , it simply will tell you what is installed or corrupted etc. may be you need to reinstall aspi layer. my dvdrw changed to a cdrw for no reason cant read a dvd but will burn one! since a recent M$ update, aspi layer had changed. theres a few posts on this site similar to yours is somthing going round?

according to the aspicheck software, i don't have any of the aspi components installed...what exactly is it?

Hi Dakkon ASPI stands for Advanced SCSI Programming Interface. ripping programs use this interface to access your DVD drive. tho it works for the ide interface in Win9x/ME should have ASPI pre-installed, but the NT OS's (Windows NT, 2000 and XP) doesn't have that layer so you can install it yourself. in command line , change directory to the unzipped aspi folder , type install x32 , and the relevant files should be installed , its fully described in the text file accompanying the aspi files. You should end up with two files installed and your dvdrw working just recheck withthe aspichk util.

Thanks, i think tht did the trick. i'll be able to test it more after class, but thanks a lot, i'll post again later

I was incorrect, it didn't fix it. I restarted the computer with a game cd in the drive, and it detected the game, so i thought it was ok. but when i remove the game, and put in anything else it doesn't detect it. Whats wierd is that in my computer it doesn't even show as a DVDRW/CDRW it just says CD Drive and theres also another CD-Drive, which i'm guessing is just a virtual drive created by Alcohol 120%...but i haven't really made any hardware/software changes recently so i don't know why it's being like this all of a sudden. ?

If it will read CDs but not DVDs, the DVD laser is probably dead.