Laptop DVD Drive
 

Hello,

Lately ever dvd i try and play in my laptop is realy choppy. It plays but the video hangs up. These aint burned DVD's. These are factory dvd's and i have tried more than 1.

So what do you guys think? DVD Drive Dieing on me? or could this be a software issue? If so a format would fix it but if its a hardware issue ill get ahold of dell and hopefuly still be under warrantee.

Well i just tried my usb dvd drive and the movies run fine. so im 99% posative it is the drive.

This happened to me and I used the OS Restore discs that came with my system to restore the DVD software, and it fixed the problem.

Yeah, this sounds like a driver problem, and restoring from the factory-reset CD would probably help that. It's sort of the "swatting a fly with a Buick" approach, but it would work.

also double check your active processes, you may have something hogging resources and CPU cycles.

It's possible the driver backed the drive off to PIO mode. PIO can get choppy when things like video decoding are going on.

Check device manager, IDE controllers, IDE channel for that drive. Make sure advanced settings allow for "DMA if available" for that device. If it's already set for DMA, look below at "Current transfer mode." If it isn't using a DMA mode that could tell you the drive is having issues and causing the driver to back off.

it says ultra DMA mode 5.

Anyways i talked to dell and they are next daying me a free new drive.

Well... even if the advice here doesn't fix anything it seems like you won by getting a new drive for nothing.

My first response would've been to try using a lens cleaner, but the new drive kind of nullifies that idea.

Realy i think dells support makes it worth buying from them. Since i bought my laptop i have talked to them 2 times. First time a key feel off my keyboad. They sent me a Free new keyboard in 2 days and i was back up and running. This time a new dvd drive. Id say they have A+ product support. They aint one of these companys who run you around all the time. My only beef with them is them calling all the time tring to sell me more stuff. its annoying to get a call a day from dell.

That's cool, my only beef with dell is I have no beef with dell. I love my dell laptop.