Laptop DVD player help

[intorainbowz]

I hope this is the correct place to post, if not mod please move to correct place. Thanks!!!

I just bought DH a used laptop, Dell. It is great EXCEPT for the DVD Rom drive. It will not read ANYTHING. I've run the troubleshooter. I've uninstalled and re-installed the driver. I've taken it in and out.

The DVD drive is :

I can hear it "thinking". I can also hear it spinning the disk.

Nothing shows up on the index page, even thought I KNOW there are files on the disk.. ala a purchased DVD or CD.

Any ideas? How do I tell if I just need to get a new drive? We go on vacay this weekend, and I had kinda wanted to take the laptop along for the purpose of watching DVD's.

TIA.

[emptymug]

Sorry if these sound like obvious questions, but without more info it's hard to know exactly what to suggest--

-Is there software installed to specifically play movies?

Example, Windows Media Player does not play DVD by default. It needs codecs. There is a decent free software called VLC that will play movies if you need one. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

-Is the DVD recognized in the drive when you view My Computer? If there is a DVD in the drive, the My Computer section should show the drive as having a disc.

-Are you sure you have the correct drivers?

With a Dell, you can go to their support page and enter the Service Tag number, usually found on the bottom of the notebook. This'll get you to the model specfic downloads, including drivers, manual, and some of the software that it may've came with.

This should provide a start for you.

[babycarrier]

Not sure the age of your computer, but I have a dell laptop with Cineplayer (I think that is the name) Anyway, something similar happened and it turns out there is a patch as it was a common problem. I would go to the dell.com page and do a search there.

I was so bummed, thinking it would need to be sent in or replaced and the patch fixed it right away.