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Old 02-11-2006, 02:51 AM   #1
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Question New DVD writer will do everything but play DVDs

Earlier this week I purchased an HP dvd740i drive. I put it on the master end of my IDE and moved my existing cdrw drive to the slave. I set both jumpers to CS.
To make a long story short(er) I installed the drive and software it came with. When I went to try out my new drive by watching a newly purchased DVD, it wouldn't play. The PowerDVD software didn't change from it's opening screen, and my whole PC bogged down, but even after 20 mins: nothing. I have a 3gig Celeron CPU and 1.5gigs of RAM on XP Home sp2. Why won't it let me watch movies?
So far I have been able to burn dvds, read burned dvds, play any type of cd. I checked the DMA, it's on. Under My Computer, it will even tell me the title of the DVD I'm not able to watch.
I am plain out of ideas as to what else to try. Please help.
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Old 02-11-2006, 05:13 AM   #2
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Was PowerDVD already installed on your machine before you installed the new DVD?
Did your copy of PowerDVD come with another DVD player? as it could be tied to that original one.
Try reinstalling PowerDVD it is probably not seeing your new player.
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Old 02-11-2006, 06:42 AM   #3
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Can you access the contents of the DVD ?

Which DVD is it ?

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Old 02-11-2006, 01:05 PM   #4
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I installed PowerDVD after intstalling the drive. I have already uninstalled and reinstalled (and tried a trial version of WinDVD too). No change.
But when PowerDVD starts up for the first time, it gives me a message that 2 cd drives are detected and to make the dvd drive (D:\) the default. (my other is cdrw only)

The DVDs I have tried so far are: Clue, Jackie Chan's First Strike, Monty Python Holy Grail, and Pirates of the Caribean.
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Old 02-11-2006, 03:50 PM   #5
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After inserting the DVD, have you tried to manually select the movie ? There's a button for choosing the movie somewhere in the player window.

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Old 02-11-2006, 04:57 PM   #6
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Okay, I just tried: It does the same thing when I manually select the movie.
Would I need to have altered any special part of my video settings when installing? (currently running Nvidia 6600 at 1280x1024 w/ 32bit color and 60 hertz refresh rate)

Edit: I can access the dvd contents through windows, but still can't play.

Last edited by rukh03; 02-11-2006 at 05:02 PM.
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Old 02-14-2006, 12:42 AM   #7
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Okay, new data:
I can play dvds, if somewhat choppy, in Windows Safe Mode...
What then could be preventing me from playing them in Full Mode?
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Old 02-14-2006, 01:09 AM   #8
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Have you checked the properties of the IDE controllers in device manager for DMA enabled?
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Old 02-15-2006, 12:38 AM   #9
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DMA is currently set to "DMA if available" and Running in Ultra DMA Mode 2
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Old 02-15-2006, 09:51 PM   #10
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Hurrah! It's all fixed.

Appearantly, I was missing an important driver for my graphics card.

Thank-you all for your help and suggestions.
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