One year DVD breakdown

[rukh03]

So a year after I bought it, my HP lightscribe DVD drive suddenly won't play DVDs.
CD it reads fine, but if I try to access a dvd it goes to a blue screen says something about my BIOS and starts a memory dump.
This is pretty far over my head.
Please help.

[tempus]

you may have other problems in your computer. Have you made any changes lately? Added any components? Try running memtest to rule out memory problems.

[KilluminatiStyle]

Try uninstalling and reinstalling your chipset drivers.

[rukh03]

Ah yes, good.
So how to I run memtest?
and
where do I find my chipset drivers to unistal/reinstal?

[LeftyAce]

download a bootable .iso file from www.memtest.org and burn it onto a CD using nero if you have it, or deepburner. (www.deepburner.com). You need to "create a cd" windows will not do this properly by default, thus you must use one of the above programs.

Before messing with the chipset, go into the hardware manager (Through control panel) and see if your CD drive has an exclamation point next to it. Whether it does or not, right click and say uninstall. Reboot, and windows will see a "new" dvd drive and install appropriate drivers. That may fix you up.

If that doesn't work, try the chipset:
Chipset drivers should be on your motherboard CDrom. If not, you should be able to download them from the motherboard manufacturer's website.

*EDIT* I would try removing the cd drive in control panel first; running a memtest takes hours :-)

[rukh03]

okay thank-you. I'll try the memtest and see what it says. Also thanks for the time warning (several hours )

P.S. How bad would it be (if I can't figure this problem out) to just reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything?

[glc]

Reformatting will not fix it if the problem is hardware related. If it's software related, the problem will come back if it's a conflict between the operating system and your software or drivers.