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Have you ever had the problem that your computer doesn't read CD's or DVD's anymore? If that is your case keep reading, these tips may be helpful for you.

We have been checking tons of computers and one of the main problems on them is that the DVD or CD Drive does not work anymore. The following tips can give you an idea what you can do if this problem is happening to you. Please be advised that there are a lot of problems involved with computers and not necessarily these tips are going to fix yours, but who knows probably they may.

Problems:

1. Computer does not play DVD movies anymore.
2. Computer does not read CD's and DVD's anymore.

Tip: The problem could be hardware related or software related.

Solutions:

1.  If you computer is not reading movies anymore, there could be a problem with the DVD decoder. The DVD decoder is the one who reads DVD movies format. You need to be sure that you have a DVD decoder properly installed in your computer such as Power DVD, VLC Media Player, Inter Video, and Roxio DVD decoder. If you install too much software, in this case different programs doing the same DVD decoder function, there is a possibility that you computer can have a software problem.

Important: Windows Media Player alone won't play DVD movies. It is not a DVD decoder.

2. If you have a DVD decoder properly installed on your computer. You need to check that your DVD drive is at least reading CD's and DVD's. To confirm this, you can do the following. You will need a boot DVD or CD (Boot CD or DVD could be a copy of Windows Full or Upgrade Version, or any bootable discs that came with your computer.) Insert the DVD or CD while you are starting you computer. If the computer starts from the Boot disc, the Optical Drive is working. Sometimes you will need to press a keyboard key in order to start from the bootable disc.

Important:  In order to start from a boot disc, you need to be sure that the boot process is setup right. In this case you will need to change inside your Bios the boot process and make the DVD or CD number one in the booting process.

3. If the DVD is still not playing you can check your DVD regions inside the software.

To play movies in America, you will need to configure your DVD software to region number 1.

4. If this is not working there could be a problem with your Optical drive, probably just died. But, I will recommend you don't give up. In the last case, if you don't want to troubleshoot your computer, buy a new optical drive and install it.  Depending on the model and brand, they are right now between $20 to $70.

Good Luck....