I have a Toshiba DVD-ROM (SD-C2202) drive (SONY VAIO Laptop) and all of a sudden it is NOT recognising DVD media at all. I am able to play Audio/Data CDs as well as VCD's but whenever I insert a DVD it does not play. I have the necessary softwares installed to play DVDs (WMP, MediaPlayer, etc.) When I try to view the files using Win Explorer - I get a error message that Device is Not ready / Not accessible. Strange thing is I have been using the same drive for playing DVDs in the past and never had any issues - this problem just started all of a sudden. I have tried cleaning up the drive, reinstalling the drivers, chipsets, etc. but that didn't help. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I think that the problem isn't in your drivers. It might be your DVD-Rom out of order. Such problems happen suddenly, probably you could fix it up, but it won't reasonable.

Go to this site and download and run 274370USA8.exe. That's an update to one of the files windows uses to access cdrom devices. That may help. Of course it's possible the DVD is just bad.

It's not a problem with my DVDs because they play fine in other drives - also, I have played these DVDs in this drive many times in the past... it's just that the drive stopped recognising them all of a sudden.

I meant the DVDrom may be bad. It may work for regular cds but not DVDs. Did you install 274370USA8.EXE?

yes, I installed 274370USA8.exe as you suggested but that didn't make any difference - still giving me the error message 'device is not ready'

It sounds like the DVDrom may be bad. The only other thing I can think of is to try a cleaning disk.