Help my Toshiba laptop recognize DVD-Rs.

May 17, 2007 6:15 PM

Help my Toshiba laptop recognize DVD-Rs.

Posting for a friend: I recently reinstalled Windows on my Toshiba Satellite laptop, restoring the factory settings, including Sonic RecordNow and Sonic DLA. This has resulted in the computer no longer reading or recognizing DVD-Rs (though it still recognizes DVD-RWs). It also won't burn to DVD-R, acting as if the disc is either not in the drive or already full. How can I get the computer to start reading DVD-Rs again? Uninstalling Sonic hasn't helped, nor has installing additional CD burning programs.

posted by ootsocsid to computers & internet (4 comments total)

I'm the friend. This is the followup to my problem from last night (link, but that problem obviously has to wait until I can get the computer to recognize the DVD-R media. Thanks!
posted by BackwardsCity at 6:19 PM on May 17, 2007

It's Windows XP, incidentally.
posted by BackwardsCity at 6:21 PM on May 17, 2007

I can't offer any suggestions to try, but myself and the 10 + other people I know who have had Toshiba Satellites have had the DVD player/writer/reader die within 1-1.5 years of purchase of the laptop. Unless they've improved the the hardware in the last few years, it is definitely the weak part of Toshiba. I think mine died 1 year and 1 day past date of purchase (since, of course, I had the one year warranty!).

*as a side note, back up everything you do, because a few months after the DVD death...the motherboard fried!
posted by lil' ears at 6:59 PM on May 17, 2007

I have a Toshiba Satellite, and it has a DVD player and a CD writer/reader (no DVD writer, but otherwise, kind of the same deal). But then it stopped playing DVDs about a year ago (when the laptop was just out of warranty -- typical! -- at age 2 years and a bit). It kind of tried to read the DVD, spinned it a bit, but then just pretended there was nothing in there. CDs were fine, both reading and writing.
I took it to the official Toshiba fixing-place. They said the DVD reader was broken and it would cost more to fix it than to buy a new external one. So if it's broken, and not under warranty, don't make them fix it, just get an external one!
posted by easternblot at 7:26 PM on May 17, 2007