DVD player malfunctioning

[Sardo]

Greetings, ye technologically minded. I'm hoping someone here will be able to offer some advice with my little problem. I recently rented Gettysburg to watch on my pc. It was on a double-sided dvd with two layers on each side - a fact I wouldn't mention except that my dvd player seems to be sort-of broken ever since. See, the film would at a certain point kind of freeze, and then I'd have to restart PowerCinema, skip a chapter and then try to rewind to the point where the problem occurred. This had happened to me before, when I had rented Gods & Generals, the prequel to Gettysburg, which was on the exact same sort of dvd. It had been a mere inconvenience, but when it happened again on the B side of the disc, there was no more fixing it: the sound was a bit garbled and the video stuttering, and I had to cease watching the film out of sheer misery.

Well, since then my computer is refusing to play any dvd properly, and the garbled sound and stuttering video are now a problem even with dvds that I've played countless times before on this same machine. It's not the software, as I've tried different players (Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic actually make matters much worse, to the point where dvds are truly unwatchable), and I've tried installing the newest version of the K-Lite Codeck Pack. I've also even uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers of the dvd player, to no avail.

I'm rather bummed out right now, especially since, having forgotten about the problem, I had rented a movie tonight and instead I've now spent hours trying to figure this out. I'm at my wit's end here, and I'm hoping someone here will be able to offer some solution, because I'm really fond of my moviefilms and I'll have many a boring night if this is not fixed.

Thanks in advance for any help at all.

[Whacker]

Have you installed any games that use Starforce or Securom? With prolonged use, Starforce can damage your optical drives, and Securom is known to cause problems with reading media.

[Sardo]

Games that at one time or another have been present on this computer: Age of Empires, Shogun: Total War Gold Edition, Medieval: Total War with Viking Invasion, Morrowind GOTY edition, and Anno 1602. Now these are all pretty old games that have also been installed on other computers at home, without any problems whatsoever, so I'm guessing they're not the problem - especially since the problem only started last week, after playing the Gettysburg dvd. Still, I don't understand at all how trying to play a dvd could mess up the dvd drive like that... Perhaps it's in need of cleaning, somehow?

[Blodrast]

Still, I don't understand at all how trying to play a dvd could mess up the dvd drive like that... Perhaps it's in need of cleaning, somehow?

Perhaps this will answer your question: http://www.techzonez.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18021

glop.org/starforce has more stuff on it if you're interested.

[Sardo]

Well, I don't have any of the games in that list, there are no Starforce entries among the hidden drivers in the device manager, and the Starforce removal tool reported that it found nothing to remove, so I guess we can now safely say that Starforce is not the culprit. I also used a lens cleaner on the drive, and that didn't help either. I guess maybe now's a good time to check if there's still a warranty on this thing.


Edit: Well, I used a Sept. 1 System Restore Point to see if that might help, and it did - dvds play normally again. I guess it was a software thing after all then - even though in the three months this computer spent at home without an internet connection, I'm pretty darn sure I didn't install any new software.

Anyway, since that seems to have turned out alright and I have my own thread going here anyway: I have a related problem. I use CyberLink PowerCinema to play my dvds, and I like it quite well, but it too has been acting up recently. Apparantly it doesn't like me pushing any of its buttons, so whenever I do too much navigating around dvd menus or what have you, it freezes up - and freezes up good: the entire computer is locked up and even Ctrl-Alt-Del is of no help; using the power button is the only way out of it. Any ideas as to what might cause such behaviour?