DVD CD drive only works when using VLC

[jaykay12]

So many brilliant people on this site ...

Our DVD CD drive stopped functioning normally this month (Jun11). My troubleshooting skills did not fix, but today when I re-installed VLC ver 1.1.10 this drive responded normally and played the DVD Movie 'Get Smart' . VLC remains incredible!

My issue is now nothing else is recognized in the dvd cd drive, not even the Dell Resource CD received with the Dell Inspiron 6000 in 2006. Using Windows XP Pro SP3 and all else on the laptop seems to be running well. I even burned about 6 CD's at the end of May with no problem using this drive.

I did reinstall iTunes this month (Jun11) so we could download Doctor Who Series 6 episodes. This morning I uninstalled it, but still have the same problem. The Explore\My Computer\DVD - RW drive (D:) doesn't even recognize a disc in the drive ... except when using VLC.

Love VLC but need the drive for other normal usage. Am I missing some type of codec file? All thoughts recommendations appreciated.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

I am afraid that we don't know. VLC uses direct access to the video inside the DVD, so no idea.

[jaykay12]

Ok thanks for the response.

We purchased the Doctor Who season series and needed to download the episodes, but since the TV show has paused until Sep11, I started following a thread to remove iTunes completely from my Dell laptop (WinXP Pro SP3).

Going thru Apples good online Articles, I used their CD diagnostics tool. Interestingly enough iTunes could access and play a music CD in the DVD CD drive that otherwise couldn't even identify or open the Dell Resources CD that came with the laptop. My conclusion was that iTunes software had taken over the CD drive (Apple likes to call it the 'optical drive'.)

Going thru their Articles on how to remove (& reinstall) iTunes, Quick Time & other software, I discovered that they are using a software named 'Gear Software' (I think it is http://www.gearsoftware.com). I removed it from the registry and hard drive. Next is iTunes itself which is ver 10.3.1 I do recall that one year ago iTunes (ver 10.0?) didn't cause this problem (we only use iTunes for the Doctor Who season downloads).

So perhaps the 'Gear Software' overpowers the native driver on PC's. Everytime I checked my driver software it came up as current and working properly. So if interested, I will report back after removing iTunes completely about whether the CD drive becomes operative again. It was working as of May31st. Jaykay12