DVD / CD / BD drive won't play Vista x64

[jgp21]

Hi

I don't know if anyone has any suggestions or similar problems!

Installing vista x64 took 3 days (unbelievable really!) - and clearly had problems reading / extracting the files from the DVD drive.

Vista works completely fine now (normal speed, no bugs-of-significance, with one major exception: The optical drive does not work correctly)

The drive is recognised correctly in device manager, there are no reported errors and the drive appears correctly in explorer.

Insert a disc, and the drive sounds like it is struggling to spin up correctly. Explorer takes about 2 minutes to read the volume in. Succeeds, gives the volume name and launches autoplay with the appropriate options (video for a DVD, slideshow for a cd of photos etc. . . )

Try to open to browse the disc, or run a file and the application hangs (e.g. try to browse with explorer, and explorer hangs; try to play a DVD and media player / centre hangs etc.). Killing the programme with task-manager usually works - eventually. The drive has the most recent firmware.

The real kicker is that I've tried two drives in the same machine, with the same error. I've tried the same drives in another (XP Pro) machine, and they work fine. I've even tried installing XP-Pro on the problem machine, and under XP-Pro, the drives work fine.

The only thing I can think of is that is there is some kind of compatability issue between the motherboard and Vista x64 - which would affect the optical drive. That said, I have 2x Samsung Spinpoint SATA II drives installed on two other ports, and they work like lightning.

Does anyone know of problems with any of the below working with x64 or have any suggestions of what to try next?

Thanks!

SST GRANDIA GD02B
ABIT AN-M2 AM2 mATX DVI GBit
1AMD AM2 6000 X2 CORE
TWIN2X4096-6400C4DHX DDR2 4GB
256MB GAINW 8600GT PCIE
2x1TB SAMSUNG SATA2 HD103UJ 32MB
Vista home premium x64
LG GGW-H20L

 

[lordbob75]

Sounds like the drive just may not work with Vista. Is it new or old?
Have you installed drivers?

~Lordbob

 

[jgp21]

Thanks for the help!

Sorry - thought I'd put the drive details in the post as well

The drive is a pretty new LG GGW-H20L BD-RW / HD / DVD-RW combo drive with firmware updated to YL05 (most recent I think) - I know other people have used this drive and it's little brother the GGC-H20L (BD read only) without any problems.

The other drive I tested was an older LG DVD R/W drive, but it had exactly the same problem. Also, if the drive wasn't compatible with Vista x64, would it not show errors in device manager or fail to read in the volume?

It's almost like the data transfer or read speed is too slow. . . As I mentioned, the vista install took 3 days, with the disc spinning up about once every 10 minutes for a fraction of a second, then throttling back down for the rest of the time. Putting a disc in now, it does recognise the disc but takes 2 minutes to read the volume.

I just tried an experiment - clicked autoplay (install) on a copy of GTA vice-city and left it overnight. by morning, the install screen had arrived, but it took over 4 hours to get that far . . . clicking on "next" produced another hang

 

[roy69]

It may be an incorrect setting in your bios.
Just as an experiment try booting from an autoplay linux disk.
If you have the same problem there is a hardware error.
How have you got the SATA configured in the bios?
Have you tried a different SATA cable?

 

[jgp21]

I've just started downloading a Knoppix image, so it will be a while before I can test that way. The drive did work perfectly under an XP-Pro x86 install I tried earlier by way of a test though, so not sure if Linux will be any different.

I've tried a different SATA cable, no joy.

Not sure what SATA settings you mean, have put all the relevant ones I could find in the IDE/SATA controller bios screens below:

IDE 1 controller: Enabled
IDE DMA Transfer access: Enabled
SATA controller: Enabled
OnCHip SATA Mode: IDE (not Raid or AHCI)

Setting SATA mode to AHCI causes a BSOD - booting into safe mode, the BSOD happens at crcdisc.sys

Thanks!

 

[jgp21]

Ooh . . . May have just found it . . . AHCI couldn't be enabled, but found a few threads pointing to Error message when you start a Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE" - enabled AHCI and the drive seems to be working. . .

Will try ther other drive now and see if it is fixed all the way . . . .

 

[lordbob75]

Thats good you got the one working.

I would have guessed that the drive was bad (I had the same thing happen to me and it just stopped reading and I had to get a new one) but since it works with XP it is obviously not that.

Let us know how it works out.

~Lordbob