My computer can't play DVDs properly anymore

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I used to be able to play DVD movies on my computer, but without any explanation it stopped working after a while (when the computer was a few months old). The computer recognizes DVD discs when they are inserted into the drive and it can usually ”sort of” play them. Unfortunately there are several problems related to the playing:

1. The pace of both the picture and sound is inaccurate and jerky.
2. Sound and picture are often out of sync.
3. Jerkiness occur repeatedly, but sometimes the movie won’t continue to play at all. The drive tries to spin up, pauses, tries to spin up again – this goes on and on for several minutes and can’t be stopped (the drive won’t eject). When it finally stops and the drive ejects the disc will be burning hot.
4. You never know if/when (and why :mad: ) the movie will stop working in the middle.

Sometimes the problems are really bad, sometimes not so. At its worst the computer won’t play a disc at all. A disc that won’t play at all one day may at least be somewhat watchable the next.

The drive is a combo CD-RW/DVD drive, and I can play CDs and burn CD-RWs without any trouble. The problem doesn't have anything to do with which media player I use, I have tried Windows Media Player, VLC, BSPlayer, PowerDVD, the list goes on... none of them work. It's not the discs that are damaged either, I have tried loads.

Surprisingly, to me at least, I can however copy the contents of a DVD disc to my computer using DVD Decrypter. The files are successfully copied to my hard disk, and the movie can be watched from there without the probelms earlier mentioned – no jerkiness etc.

My OS is Windows XP Pro.

Any help is very appreciated, this problem has been bugging me for months! :( Thanks in advance!
 
Whenever I have the symptoms you describe it's beacause my DVD-reader can't rad the disc (because the disc is damaged). However, in your case, it might be something with the DVD-reader itself. I'm not sure my tips are really accurate, so I just say what I'd do in your possition (which might be totally unnessecary but in my cases, it has always helped with whatever I've done).

Softare first, I'd try reinstalling eventualy drivers, updating them if I could. I'd try 3rd party drivers if I could, or check if some program is interfering with the reader itself.

Then I'd go to hardware if that didn't sort the problem. I'd try switching it to another IDE cable, (assuming it's 2nd master and HDD is 1st master), I'd try putting it as 1st slave, and try switching the HDD and DVD-reader IDE-cables.

Mostly i've just been lucky fixing problems I couldn't explain just by poking around and testing the problem with different random stuff. I really don't recommend it, because when I do, I'm aware I might get things worse and I'm ready to end up buying a new computer. I hope someone else will have better suggestions. I just thought I'd write this since I have a computer problem myself and I desperately need a break (been on it for 12 hours and I still haven't had anything to eat today).

Let me know how it turns out.
Cheers.
 
Thank you for your suggestions. I've tried to update the drivers but it didn't help, and trying to switch cables around is unfortunately not possible for me, as the computer is a laptop and I don't want to mess around inside it. I found another thread here with people having similar issues as I have:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic38792.html

Thanks very much for trying to help, hope you can get your own problem solved.
 
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