DVD-R Problem

[MrFlibble]

A friend of mine burned me some files on a DVD-R, and at first it worked fine, yet some time afterwards, when I was trying to open it, it would appear blank on my PC. I returned the DVD to my fried and he told me he'd got no problems opening it, and gave it back to me. I still got the same result on my PC though - the disk looks blank. The weird thing is that it used to work for me for the first couple of times, and the problem seems to have no clear reason.

I've got WinXP, the DVD (TDK DVD-R 4.7 GB single-sided 1-16x speed) was burned on Vista with Nero. Other DVDs my friend previously burned the same way work fine at all times on my PC. Is there anything I could do to make this one work?

[gryphon]

My first guess is that your friend didn't finalize it and your reader has troubles reading it.

[MrFlibble]

I also had the same suspicion, but then why did it work for the first time?

I've encountered the trouble of a similar trouble if a disk were burned on Vista using the built-in Microsoft CD/DVD writing utility, but in these cases it would just never open properly, while here I could successfully read files from the disk the first couple of times I used it... Weird.

[Andrew]

Could just be a bad dvd.

[MrFlibble]

If it were so, then why does he have no problems reading it even after it fails to open on my PC?

Are there any utils or maybe some Windows CD drive settings that could be tweaked for a possible solution?

[Andrew]

I have no idea :P

Get him to burn it again  :-X

Or boot from linux liveusb, then input the dvd and see if it shows up in that.

[MrFlibble]

Get him to burn it again  :-X

Isn't that just too easy? ;)

But I'll probably have to do that, anyway.

[gryphon]

Or boot from linux liveusb, then input the dvd and see if it shows up in that.

The day that is not your solution for everything I personally gonna send you an applepie or something :P ;)

[Nyarlathotep]

How old is the DVD player ?

My brother had a similair issue. We tried everything, from updating software to flashing the drive.

Nothing worked. He then bought a new drive for 30 euro's and all is working fine again.

Last time I spent that much time on something that can be replaced for 30 euro's...

[MrFlibble]

It's a laptop bought back in 2004, so yeah, it's pretty old.

[Nyarlathotep]

Maybe look for a replacement drive. They shouldn't be that expensive anymore

[MrFlibble]

I fancy the entire problem is not worth the effort. After all, it is just a single DVD that is not working.