Hi. My Sony DVD+RW DWP50A doesnt detect any kind of DVD I insert. It DOES play audio CD's though. I have tried rental DVD's and data DVD's with my own movie files. I have deleted and reinstalled drivers through device manager, rolled back to previous drivers, and tried system restore. It happened once before and I followed advice for deleting upper and lower filters in the registry (that worked). But this time it doesnt work. Nothing has worked. ANy advice?????

I'd say your DVD drive is dead and it's time to replace it.

as far as replacing goes... I have a compaq presario 2500 notebook. the cd/dvd rw is a sony cw p50a. I have found some on yahoo auction that look similiar. are they interchangeable?? will they work as long as I download the appropriate driver??

You should be looking for a slim optical drive for notebooks. If that's what you found, then it will probably fit. The only other thing you need to know is whether its interface is SATA or IDE. Those two are not interchangeable. You should consult your manual to see which your notebook is compatible with.

The optical drive driver should already be installed in your notebook so no additional driver is needed.

Out of curiousity, if you insert a dvd and look under Windows Explorer at the drive, does it show anything in the drive?

Thanks mailpup.
CCT: when I insert a DVD it doesnt show anything. But when I put an audio CD in it does.

Try this tool:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts_d...cd_dvd_fix.htm
Then restart

Test to see if the drive is now showing