Windows does not recognize DVDs inserted into Blu-ray drive

Question

I am having a problem with a Blu-ray drive I have in my PC. Its a Blu-ray reader drive and it reads and writes CDs and DVDs. My drive has been working great for about a year now, but for some reason now, when I insert a DVD, Windows 7 doesn't recognize that there is a disc in the drive. I have to eject the disc and insert it again. I sometimes have to do this like 30 times before it "catches" and Windows 7 recognizes the disc.

My discs are not scratched up. It does it even with brand new discs. I've tried about 10 different DVDs and the same problem happens. One thing that is weird though is that the problem does not seem to happen when I insert Blu-ray discs. The problem only happens with DVD discs. I tried running a drive lens cleaner. Same issue.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I just experienced the same issue with my BD-RE drive. I was ripping a DVD with DVDFab and an error occurred and the program quit. When I went back in to rip another DVD the program would not recognize the disk. I then looked at the drive in My Computer and realized that Windows 7 is not reading the DVDs at all. After a few reboots and removing the drivers and reinstalling them I still had not fixed the problem.

I then tried Microsoft's "FixIt" program which was a joke and did nothing. Next, at the advice of a Microsoft forum here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116 I went into the registry and removed "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. After this, I restarted and Windows had a BSOD so I rebooted again and got in fine. However, my problem was still not fixed.

I then searched the web a little and found that other people with the same BD-RE drive (Lite-On ATAPI iHBS112 2) have had similar problems. I looked at my drive properties in Device Manager and under the Details tab I selected Hardware Ids and found that my firmware version was CL0B. I found http://www.firmwarehq.com/Lite-On/iHBS112%2B2/files.html and downloaded the firmware upgrade CL0K, installed it and restarted my system.

Now everything is back to normal and my drive works great. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Sound like the drive is probably broken. Just the DVD reading elements of an optical drive malfunctioning is not unusual.

Try reading disks from another OS (like a Linux LiveCD or something), and if it still doesn't read DVD's as expected (like, every time) then the next step is to test with a new drive. For completeness, and if it's available to you, perhaps try the drive in another computer.

Answer 3

The drive is probably broken. I once had a DVD-ROM drive that could read CDs just fine, but choked on DVDs. The DVDs either weren't recognized, or transferred very slowly and had errors (can't remember exactly - it's been a few years).

My point is that it's not unreasonable to have a broken drive that can still read some types of media without issue. The fact that known-good DVDs still don't work well most of the time, yet do work 1 out of 30 times is a big red flag for a hardware issue. I'd suggest trying a different known-good drive if you really think it's software.

Another way to prove that it's a hardware issue would be to insert a bootable DVD (say, a Windows install DVD, or a Linux live CD) and try booting to it several times in a row. If it doesn't boot reliably 100% of the time, then it's got to be a bad drive.