DVD R/RW Drive only reads DVD’s and not CD’s

Asked By phatalos 0 points N/A Posted on - 09/28/2011

Hi,

I have been having a problem with my Dell Optiplex 360 DVD drives. Whenever I insert a DVD it plays fine but it always fails to read any CD. I know it is not a problem with the CD's as they work fine on my laptop. I have even tried XP recovery CD's and these don't work either. The CD's just don't get recognized. Please help me solve this.

Ameet

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• Question Category: Hardware Components

Best Answer by Ben Henry

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Answered By Ben Henry 10 points N/A #83184

DVD R/RW Drive only reads DVD’s and not CD’s

There are several possible causes of error in this case. Each described below.

1. Insert a lens cleaning disk and clean the Lens.

2. Insert any bootable CD in the drive and restart the computer using boot from CD. Now check that it boots from CD or not. If it does then there is no problem with your DVD/RW. If it don’t then maybe the lens is weak or it needs cleaning.

3. May be there is some problem with your DVD/RW. There are some writers which have separate pickups for CD and DVD. May be your CD pickup is faulty.

4. May be your DVD/RW driver is not working well. Just uninstall this driver and then reinstall it.

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• Posted on - 09/28/2011
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Answered By Clair Charles 15 points N/A #83185

DVD R/RW Drive only reads DVD’s and not CD’s

If you are able to use the CDs on another computer without any problem, then the problem is not with the CDs but with the DVD drive itself. The possible reason as to why the CDs are refusing to be read on your computer is because the optical lens on the DVD drive of that computer may be having problems.

Dust may have accumulated on them and then the sensitivity on the CDs to dust is high and therefore making them not to be read. You will therefore need to clean up the DVD drive of your computer to be able to use the CDs on it.

-Clair Charles

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• Posted on - 12/22/2011
• Question Category: Hardware Components