Please help - Sony VGN A250 DVD RW drive won't play DVDs

[evolve]

Hi, I have a Sony VGN A 250 laptop. In the past, I had only use the drive to play DVDs and it worked fine. Last week, I put a CD into the DVD RW DW-D56A drive and copied a CD. Ever since this, the WinDVD or Window Media Player cannot play DVD. I look at the device manager DVD RW DW-D56A device manager, the properties setting is in CD-ROM mode. I can't change it to DVD RW mode. I also uninstalled and reintalled the above driver, the DVD is still not working.

The troubleshooting said to update the WinDVD player and I did. But still can't play DVD.

Can someone please help? I really appreciate your input/feedback. Thanks in advance.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

I've got something of a similar problem, in that my Sony VGN-S56GP won't play DVD's with WinDVD anymore...

Try downloading the VLC player and see if it works with that. Make sure the dvd you use is the correct region, as most vaios seems to have a big problem running dvds that are from a different region, even with special software in place...

 

[evolve]

Hi, Mr. Garibaldi, thanks for your reply. I downloaded the VLC media player and I inserted a readable DVD to the laptop. I hit Play, and came a msg saying it's unable to open drive E (where the dvd drive is located).

When I tried using Window Media Player or WinDvd, both indicated Disk Not Found, Please insert a Disk. So, the problem must be that the player is not recognizing the DVD or unable to read it.

How can this be? It was working perfectly for 12 months until I inserted a CD into the DVD drive to play. Can a DVD drive be converted to a CD drive and unable to convert back to DVD?

I think I have tried as about everything. But I haven't given up hope yet. Please if you have any further suggestions, please help!

Thanks in advance.

 

[kirock]

Will it play a CD still? I'm trying to make sure it's working at all.

 

[evolve]

Hi kirock, funny you asked as I just put a CD in the drive and it's unable to read - it says to insert a disc (so obviously the drive is not reading anything at all). Do you have any idea? Thanks for your help.

 

[kirock]

I'm thinking that maybe the drive died (the laser blew). Have you tried completely uninstalling the drive in Device Manager, (i.e. not just the driver)?
Then reboot and let windows find it again and install drivers. Check the PATA cable, make sure it didn't happen to come loose.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

The problem is that he's on a laptop. And warranties have a tendency to go by by if you open them up yourself...

Which program did you use when you copied the cd? It could be that there were a problem with the way it locked the drive. Since windows recognizes the player, I'd venture a guess that it is a software fault somewhere.

 

[evolve]

MrGaribaldi, I think you are on to something. The external CD burner I used was a TDK CD-RW drive. Otherwise, I normally use a HP dvd 740. I've never played CDs on this laptop and I solely use the laptop DVD player for movies.

Another thing was that I also downloaded DVD Shrink and DVD Decrypter just
prior to the DVD player won't read the DVDs. Not knowing if they were related, I immediately deleted the DVD Shrink and Decrypter.

I have never have any problem with this laptop what so ever until now. I hate to take the laptop to Geek Squard and have to wait for 2 days before they can tell me anything. The optical drive is not that expensive these days if the laser is insteed burn out. However, I keep thinking that it's the software problem with I use the TDK CD-RW external burner.

Does anyone has any idea? I don't know how to go to BIO and I'm afraid to delete the drive in the device manager. Unless an experience techical person is willing to write out a bit of an instruction for me.

Thanks alot, I really appreciate all the help I'm getting here. Cheers.

 

[MrGaribaldi]

I think you're going to have to uninstall the disk fom the device manager. And I'm about to go traveling in SE Asia, so I can't really help you out.

Usually, it's just a matter of going to device manager, deleting the drive, restarting and it'll re-install itself. But I can understand that you'd like a more detailed guide than that to do it the first time.

You could also try reinstalling the drivers for the drive before deleting it to see if that clears it.
There aren't any specific drivers for the dvd-rom, but if you download this it might contain it. You might also want to try to update the dvd firmware.
For all drivers for your vaio, go here.
BEWARE> Above links only valid if you're in the US. If you're anywhere else, start "digging" from here...

Good luck!

 

[evolve]

Thanks MrGaribaldi, your very generous in helping me! Thanks for all the links, they are very helpful for my specific model. Have a great trip to Asia!!