XP thinks my DVD drive is a CD drive.
 

Ah, my first Help Desk thread. :) Let's see if you all can help me out here.

The other day, a friend of mine came over and installed a DVD drive for me. Specifically, it's a LiteOn 16X DVD+-R/+-RW. I assumed my computer already had a DVD drive before, so when I received a DVD-RW with anime on it, I thought I was all set. Unfortunately, I just had a CD-RW drive so that's why I needed a DVD drive installed.

Anyway, after being correctly installed (the same friend installed other things for me onto an older computer so I'm sure they knew what they were doing) we put in the DVD-RW and nothing happened. Not even the usual box Windows pops up appeared. (The one that asks what you want to do with the files on the disc.) I figured, well, maybe the DVD I received was messed up. So I put in an official DVD I knew worked. The folder containing the movie opened, so I double clicked the icon, and got the hourglass cursor for a few minutes, but that was it. The computer didn't freeze or anything, but the movie just wouldn't play.

My friend and I emailed LiteOn asking for help but got no answer. He thinks that Windows sees the DVD drive as a CD drive, because when we checked the properties of it, it said CD drive. I tried changing it back but it wouldn't stay.

Is there anything I can do to make Windows realize this is a DVD drive? ;__; I want my anime. If you need the specs of my computer, I can give you that.

EDIT: Oh crap, I thought this was Help Desk. :tpg: I need to not have so many tabs open at once. Can someone move this for me? :D

You installed the drivers that came with the drive, right? Or, failing that, downloaded ones from the company's website?

Not too many optical drives come with drivers nowadays.

Does the BIOS see the DVD drive correctly?

Yes, I did install them, however, I'm pretty sure they were meant for DOS. The website didn't have anything else to download.



What do you mean by that? Sorry, I know very little about this stuff. ;_;

press F1 or F2 or Delete button (95% will one of them) when PC start,and go IDE to see name HDD and DVD Driver.to make sure if CD or DVD

To translate: Reboot your computer. Before Windows starts to boot you need to hold down a key (usually F2 or Delete) to enter the BIOS menu. This is the menu for your PC's motherboard, and it will also show you what drives are connected. I don't recommend changing anything, just bring up the menu and see what it says. This will at least tell you if it's being detected properly.

However, seeing as you could open and read the DVD I'd assume the drive is being detected. What does it show up as in "My Computer"? My DVD drive also says "CD Drive" in the properties menu, but I know it works properly so that is probably not your problem. Did you use a program to watch the DVD with or did you just double-click on a file?

This is what comes up in the properties menu. In My Computer it says 'DVD-RW Drive'.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/dvddrive.png

try to download Nero InfoTool and to us what you see.

http://www.cdspeed2000.com/files/NeroInfoTool_403.zip

Then it's being detected properly.

You probably just don't have a DVD player installed. Windows won't play DVDs without a 3rd party player installed, since it doesn't come with an set of CSS decryption keys. You can use freeware such as VLC or mplayer to play DVDs in the absence of other software, though the legality of this varies from country to country.

But, unencrypted DVDs will work. I know I could watch burned dvds on my sisters machine right after I installed a dvd drive, in regular windows media player, with nothing extra installed on the computer.

Thats what it should look like, well its how mine is anyway and mine works fine

Have you done your Windows updates recently? I remember about a year back there was an update that fixes this issue.