Software problem?

Not directly photography related but any advice would be appreciated. My DVD/CD unit has developed a quirk in that the only discs it will play back are the one's I burn images to. I can't load any new software that is supplied on CD's or DVD's.

Probably coincidence but this all started about the time I disabled Adobe Gamma and started calibrating my monitor. Could that have anything to do with it? Any other ideas??

Thanks.

Mark,

I don't see how a monitor profile would affect DVD/CD hardware, or drivers.

Are you receiving any error messages when you try to install software from CD? Is 'Device Manager' (assuming you're using Windoze) showing any problems with the drive or its driver?

-PB

Preston, thanks. No error messages when trying to install and the Device Manager says the drive is working properly. It's got me stumped.

Mark, it almost sounds like "Auto Play" is either disabled or is not working properly.

Try this: insert a disk that you haven't been able to access into the drive. Then, go to Windoze Explorer and see if you can get the contents of the CD to display by opening the CD Drive folder. If the folder contents come up, the drive is reading the files. It would then appear that 'Auto Play' is not working.

Let us know what happens.

-PB

Thanks again, Preston.

I cannot get CD's to open thru Explorer or My Computer...it doesn't appear they are being recognized. However, a DVD that I burned with some images on it will open. Is it possible for the just the CD component of a CD/DVD unit to go bad?

That may be possible Mark. I'm not sure, but I believe that they use two separate lasers to read DVDs vs. CDs. If one is out, then that function may not work. They (I think) are LEDs which are very reliable, so the problem is more likely on a lens or the board the LED is on.

Can you play music CDs? Have you tried disabling the device and re-enabling it? I had an old sound card that I had to do this to to make it work - never figured out what the bug was, just used that work-around when necessary. But windows always said the device was working properly. (Just thinking of anything else to try for more info...)

Could be that the read/write heads are misaligned and will not read standard tracks on CDs/DVDs but will read the tracks written by the CD/DVD writer.

Thanks everyone for your replies. I still can't figure this out so am going to go ahead and just replace the darn thing. Knock on wood I still have never had a HD failure so if this is as bad as it gets I can't complain.