Well that's just weird!

[Tea]

For some impossibly strange reason that seems to have no justification or real cause my DVD drive breaks after inserting my lovely new Sam and Max Season One DVD.

I know Sam and Max is a Dual Layer DVD, it is a dual layer drive, but as far as I know no other Dual Layers have done this.

So what happens:
Sam and Max pops in, autorun pops up, explorer or autorun.exe does not run.
I cannot open D:\ in explorer or install the game, I am however able to watch the DVD in Media Player/VLC.

To fix it I have to uninstall the driver, reboot and check for hardware changes. But then if I place Sam and Max back in the drive, I need to uninstall, reboot, check. Again.

I have no idea what's doing this or how to stop it happening. It's incredibly strange. I really hope it's not copy protection, I already had one drive break completely after Starforce and SecuROM ganged up on it.

I don't think I have another Dual Layer DVD to test it with. But I'm sure I have one hiding somewhere (just name any movie or game and I'll probably have it).


Update: I can launch setup from the command line. Will install and see if I can actually play the game (IE: the stupid copy protection proves I own the game)

Update 2: The idiotic invention that is copy protection is letting me play. Still not sure why this is happening though, can't open anymore discs in explorer until I can be bothered to reboot.

Update 3: I just realised how impossible vague I was.
I'm on Windows 7 (although the same thing happend in Windows Vista the other day) and my DVD drive is "Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200A ATA"

[Will]

Have you tried loading up the disk on a different computer? It's possible that it could just be a faulty disk.

[Tea]

Well I (quite painfully) tested the DVD in the spare XP computer (and damn was it heavy!) and it seemed to work fine. I haven't got a clue why it's doing it in this machine.

I guess this is out of your jurisdiction now?

[Will]

Not necessarily, but it is out of my skillset. I'll pop it over to someone who know a bit more about these things.

[Tea]

It's alright - flashed a new firmware and now it's just peachy - even reads much faster now too!

Thanks anyway :)

Reference:
If anyone else is having a simillar problem I got my firmware here: http://www.sony-optiarc.us/en/support-service/downloads/fw_dvd-writer-ad-series.html

In my case I needed the AD-7200A (P-ATA) firmware. Make sure you download the right one. It's a simple program with a "FLASH!" button.

[Tea]

Wonderful. I turn on my PC this morning and it's happened again.