imsweet Posted December 31, 2008 Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 We have bit the bullet and brought a second hand laptop. It's an IBM thinkpad A20m. The ad for it said it had CD & DVD drive. the only thing is we cant seem to play any CD's or DVD's?? they dont run when put in (like on this one) and in [my computer], there's no option to open it or anything. so here i am again asking for help. I have googled it but all that stuff doesnt make much sense. I've also emailed the guy we got it off but being new years and all........ cant expect too much today. Any help would be great,,,,, thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkLB Posted December 31, 2008 Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 Post edited. I just re read the original post and my input was irrelevant :oops: Sorry I can't help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Posted December 31, 2008 Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 We have bit the bullet and brought a second hand laptop. It's an IBM thinkpad A20m. The ad for it said it had CD & DVD drive. the only thing is we cant seem to play any CD's or DVD's?? they dont run when put in (like on this one) and in [my computer], there's no option to open it or anything. so here i am again asking for help. I have googled it but all that stuff doesnt make much sense. I've also emailed the guy we got it off but being new years and all........ cant expect too much today. Any help would be great,,,,, thanks Where did you bring the laptop from? Would help if you mentioned what OS you have. I'm guessing probably Vista, I haven't touched that yet. In XP though you can start up Windows explorer, right click on the drive in the left hand pane, properties and then select all the autoplay options under the auto play tab. Easiest would probably be to set them all to ask every time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imsweet Posted December 31, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 if OS is windows it's xp. Will try the right click thing soon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suphew Posted December 31, 2008 Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 First thing to do would be go online and get it to run all the updates. making sure you have the lastest version and patches for media player. If this doesn't help you could down load VLC media player, it's a good program and will play just about anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ira Posted December 31, 2008 Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 if OS is windows it's xp. Will try the right click thing soon All XP is windows, but not all windows is XP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caryl Posted December 31, 2008 Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 Put a commercial music CD in and see if that plays (not a home made one). This will show you if the drive itself is working. However, if autoplay is turned off go to Start, My Computer and see if the CD is listed there. It should have something like CD or DVD Drive listed. If it has, click on it and you should see a list of track numbers. Double click on one and it should play. This will show us that the drive actually exists, as far as XP is concerned, and that it can read a music disc which should be one of the easiest things to do. Let us know how you get on with this and we will go from there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imsweet Posted December 31, 2008 Author Report Share Posted December 31, 2008 Thanks Caryl, put in a cd and it started to whizz around liek all the other times then just stops. Going to start, my computer it has: shared documents. user documents. under hard disk drives: local disk © devices with removable storage: 3 1/2 Floppy (A) This is the email i got back just now: I got my son to put a new hard drive in as the old one died, and he fitted a new CD writer/DVD-rom in it as well (IBM 24X is the old cd-rom drive and it still works.) The DVD drive should work though keeping in mind that it will be set to zone 4 dvds only, try downloading a program like powerdvd and installing that on the laptop and seeing if that helps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caryl Posted January 1, 2009 Report Share Posted January 1, 2009 It isn't recognising the hardware setup. Go to Start, Control Panel, then click on System. Under system properties, click on Hardware then device manager. It should have a list of stuff in there. It will start at the top in alphabetical order. Partway down you should find DVD/CD Rom drives or similar. Now, assuming that's there, click on the wee + sign beside that it should show you the DVD manufacturer. If it isn't there, the plus sign isn't there, or the DVD/CD Rom category is not there, that means the drive is not being recognised as existing at all. You need to go back to who you got it from in that case as they have done something wrong or have not used a compatible make or model. It is possible special drivers are required but not normally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imsweet Posted January 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2009 Ok, will try that tonight, i cant connect to internet (to download a dvd media player) as it only came with a modem connection card thing and not a network card for broadband. Least it think thats right......... google said so. Thought i'd take it into dick smith and plead for help. :lol: You never know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBoyd Posted January 1, 2009 Report Share Posted January 1, 2009 pop round if you want, and I will probably be able to sort it. You know where we are! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imsweet Posted January 1, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 1, 2009 oh............. cool. just pm'd you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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