CD/DVD drive?

[Grandpappy]

Why doesn't my DVD drive (D) recognise DVD's or anything other than plain CD's? I'm sure that I used to play films & stuff on this drive. I'm running Windows Home Edition on a Dell Dimension 5150 with SP3 and 2.5 M of memory !
I'm confused because I might have done something to the D drive workings!!
Any help please?
Many thanks

[rojash]

It's probably confused by all those spurious apostrophes :-)
What exactly do you mean by "doesn't recognise"?
Do you mean it won't play video DVDs, or that it flings up an error message for any kind of DVD, including data DVDs - or that it stops responding?

If it simply won't play DVDs, try installing a free DVD player such as this one http://tinyurl.com/3rk7yv

[AlBags]

If it runs a CD or audio CD and you can open in Explorer, it will play a DVD if it is DVD RW or Rom and not from a protected region. Look in Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/DVD CD/ROM drives, the d-click on the entry to see what it is. If DVD drive there, there will be Region unlocked tab. Check there to see what's listed/selected.
Wherever you are, an unprotected (region-free) dvd will play in Windows Media Player so long as you have codec installed for MPEG-2 (DVD Video Standard) and drive is definitely a DVD drive (ROM or RW)

[TTG]

First I was getting burn failures on dvds...then cd's. After a while it stopped recognising dvds....then stopped recognising cd's. It seemed to be a gradual thing. Lens cleaner did not work so replaced the drive. You can get them for around £30 from pc world. Easy to fit.

[Grandpappy]

Rojash-
I ran a test on my DVD drive and I've got the error code 650F : 2873

Msg: Optical drive BIST--FLASH ROM test failed

Any ideas?

When I click on My Computer , the drive is not shown.

Any help or guidance will be most appreciated.

Many thanks

[rojash]

"I ran a test on my DVD drive"
What test?

Sounds like a hardware fault. A replacement will set you back around 20 - 25 quid.