"Windows cannot read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted,

[Guest]

I have an old Pet. III Toshiba Tecra 8200 laptop. However, the DVD drive was
replaced with a new one only about a year ago.

I run XP Home edition on it.

Whenever I try to read a data CD - i.e. the Windows XP Home Operating System
disc (CD) or any other CD that has a game or program on it - I get the error
message "Windows cannot read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted, or
it could be using a format that is not compatible with Windows."

Now - puzzling enough - if I take a cd that has mp3 or recorded video
file(s) on it - like a tv show that I recorded with my Windows XP Media
Center on my desktop - the DVD drive on the Toshiba laptop can read/play that.


In order to verify it was not a CD problem - I took the same CD(s) and
loaded them into my desktop computer and they worked fine.

I've tried cleaning the laser eye on the DVD drive but that didn't help.

I puzzled if I'm facing a hardware or software problem since the drive can
read some CD's - but not others.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[M.I.5¾]

I have an old Pet. III Toshiba Tecra 8200 laptop. However, the DVD drive
was
replaced with a new one only about a year ago.

I run XP Home edition on it.

Whenever I try to read a data CD - i.e. the Windows XP Home Operating
System
disc (CD) or any other CD that has a game or program on it - I get the
error
message "Windows cannot read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted,
or
it could be using a format that is not compatible with Windows."

Now - puzzling enough - if I take a cd that has mp3 or recorded video
file(s) on it - like a tv show that I recorded with my Windows XP Media
Center on my desktop - the DVD drive on the Toshiba laptop can read/play
that.


In order to verify it was not a CD problem - I took the same CD(s) and
loaded them into my desktop computer and they worked fine.

I've tried cleaning the laser eye on the DVD drive but that didn't help.

I puzzled if I'm facing a hardware or software problem since the drive can
read some CD's - but not others.

A month ago, I would have said that the drive is faulty. However since
then, I have come across a couple of systems where the drive will apparently
read some types of disk but not others (where all the disks read correctly
on other machines). Also, the drive works correctly when connected to
another system. The conclusion was that the drivers or utilities that
handle the particular type of disk were corrupted or damaged in some way.

The bad news is, that I tinkered around with these machines for some time
before caving in and rebuilding the XP installation on them. This solved
the problem, but I was convinced there had to be an easier way.

The odd part was that if I connected another DVD drive via a USB adaptor, it
read all the disk types correctly. Since the machines were laptops trying a
different type of inbuilt DVD drive was not an option, but I somehow felt
that this may have worked.