First of all, i have tried googling this issue, but all i get is results for w7 not detecting DVD drives, and not actual kinds of disk, which is the issue i am having, which is when attempting to use a DVD R disk it will not play the things, the drive spins up and messes about for a few minutes, and just shows me an empty disk if i open it up in my computer, and i obviously cant play them as according to this pc, theres nothing to play.

The drive, a pioneer DVR-116D of the IDE variety, is capable of both reading and writing of DVD disks, TBH not much of their techy stuff makes a lot of sense to me, so here is a list of things it can and cannot play DVR-116D Specs.

I know that the drive can handle these disks for sure anyway, because i am trying to watch the same disk that i watched on this same machine with the same dvd drive as i did when i had XP, and it worked perfectly, so i feel that this may be related to windows 7.

Does anyone know of any specific issues?

Many thanks in advance.

can it boot disks? if it can't, maybe there's something wrong with the electronics of the drive... thing is, you'll have to test it with both cd's and dvd's because combo drives have two lasers in them.

I find that on many occasions there are issues with reading DVD +R / DVD +RW discs, However DVD -R discs seem to work (always have done on drives that have failed to read DVD +R's properly).

So assuming that you are using +R's, try using DVD or CD -R's. If you are already using DVD -R's

Alternatively, this registry patch has also bought me alot of success when dealing with drives that simply do not recognise any disc being there.

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/files/file/8-cdgone/

cheers for the replies guys, although i doubt that its a hardware related issue as this machine would play the very same dvd when i had xp but refuses to detect this or any other dvd r disk, i seem to remember having the same trouble with a dvd rw when i attempted to restore all my backed up music onto it after i replaced the hdd and installed w7, although i suspected that was caused by something to do with the way older os's use the udf format as it was a data disk and thats why it showed up as a blank on my machine, i ended up using mum and dads vista powered thing and had to copy the lot onto a series of cds to get my tracks back, but im now thinking that the 2 faults are related, ill try that patch you mentioned franky.

and as for the + or - thing, i have no idea what this means, plus the disk im trying to play has artwork on it so doesnt say, all i can tell you is that the playing surface is a bluey purple colour.

I encountered a problem a while ago while trying to use double layer discs, may be related.

The problem was the SATA port used for the drive.
My mobo has both Intel and Gigabyte SATA controllers, one of them did not play nice with my DVD drive...swapping to the other and it worked fine.

thanks for the tip beano, although this may not be an option for me as i have one of those compact little sff computers, and it has 1 sata socket for the hdd and 1 ide socket for the dvd drive and no others, theres not enough room in the case for any other devices, the pc i have is a hp compaq dc7100 sff, very basic indeed.

Might also be worth checking if there are firmware updates for your DVD drive.
Quite often these fix issues with certain disc types.

Tried lots of things, didnt make any difference, then i spat my dummy out and broke the door off the DVD drive, i know, temper temper.

However, this then required me to change the drive, so i pulled the LG GSA-6143B drive out of an old machine that i bought for spare parts, fitted it and i can now play all the disks i want to, lovely, the only downside being that my black and silver pc now has a cream DVD drive, oh well, nevermind.