Sony V505DXP with CD/DVD-Rom drive. XP Professional.

Problem: Used to be able to play commerical vCDs such as martial arts movies
etc.
After autoupdate and receiving a bunch of patches (including anumber of SP2
items) Windows no longer recognizes vCD disk (video CD. MPEGAV files with
..dat extension. No autoplay.exe file. Some files with .vcd extensions).

Symptom: Insertion of a vCD disk into the drive will cause the drive to spin
for a long time and then hangs up the computer. Need to turn power off to
stop the problem.

This is not a hardware issue as I can still play DVD movies and music CDs.

Reinstallting the drive (per instructions from Sony) did not work.
Updated firmware driver from Sony did not work.

None of the following programs work since the computer does not even
recognize what is in the drive: WMP 10, InterVideo, Herosoft vCD player.

Cannot do a system restore (or I won't still be in this soup!)

Post in the Video Community generated 0 response.

Would appreciate help from the experts.

Thanks.

"Paul Khan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
newsED00A66-1515-45B9-88F0-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Sony V505DXP with CD/DVD-Rom drive. XP Professional.
>
> Problem: Used to be able to play commerical vCDs such as martial arts
> movies
> etc.
> After autoupdate and receiving a bunch of patches (including anumber of
> SP2
> items) Windows no longer recognizes vCD disk (video CD. MPEGAV files with
> .dat extension. No autoplay.exe file. Some files with .vcd extensions).
>
> Symptom: Insertion of a vCD disk into the drive will cause the drive to
> spin
> for a long time and then hangs up the computer. Need to turn power off to
> stop the problem.
>
> This is not a hardware issue as I can still play DVD movies and music CDs.
>
> Reinstallting the drive (per instructions from Sony) did not work.
> Updated firmware driver from Sony did not work.
>
> None of the following programs work since the computer does not even
> recognize what is in the drive: WMP 10, InterVideo, Herosoft vCD player.
>
> Cannot do a system restore (or I won't still be in this soup!)
>
> Post in the Video Community generated 0 response.
>
> Would appreciate help from the experts.
>
> Thanks.

I am totally unfamiliar with "commercial VCD's"?
I suspect that these are in fact pirates?

It is not Windows that plays back media files, it will
be media software, such as you detail
Your problem seems to be that the DVD rom drive
does not recognise these specific VCD's.
You detail that you followed Sony's instructions to
Reinstall the drive - is it detailed as working without
problems in device manager?
You updated the firmware as instructed by Sony, so
there can be doubt it is the latest version.
I therefore suspect it to be a codec issue, or..........
Have you tried installing a previous version of WMP?
VCD's come with the file as an mpeg1 or if SVCD as
a varient of MPEG2.
MPEG2's are not "constant" and require specific codecs.

What version of WMP were using that the VCD's did
play? If Not WMP10, then reinstall the version you did
use.