DVD drive not refreshing when new disk inserted.

E

escribblings

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My mother-in-law has purchased a HP laptop with windows 8 which has since updated to 8.1 (and we think update 1 - there is nothing to say update 1 on it, but it does have a power icon on the tiles screen).

When a DVD (data or film) is inserted, the drive spins up - but not to full speed - and the icon in My Computer doesn't change to show the drive is no longer empty (or changed from a previous disc).


At one point, after installing a Canon printer, I switched out the install DVD for a film. As per usual, the icon did not update. I refreshed with [F5] but nothing changed. When I double clicked the drive icon, it opened up but showed the files from the install DVD and not the Film that was in the drive.

It even went as far as to open up on of the smaller files off the DVD that was no longer in the drive. As though it had cached it for some reason. It was only when I retried to run the setup executable did it poll the drive and find out there was a new disc in there and finally allowed us to watch the Film.

The film in this case was Life of Pi - we also tried Skyfall - both of which are off-the-shelf commercial DVD's and not home-brew DVD films.

Is there any setting that can be changed? I have changed the autoplay settings to ask everytime for everything but that had no effect.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 & 8
If you right click the drive icon while there is a disc in it, what shows in bold in the context menu? Is it Play or Open? I had a similar problem on Windows 7. I had to right click data discs and click Open from the context menu. I forget how I changed the default from Play to Open though. After that it would open on double click or Enter to show me the files.

Edit: Not exactly the same problem but it did keep the icon from the previous disc as in your case.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.0 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Toshiba Satelite C55D-A Laptop
    CPU
    AMD EI 1200
    Memory
    4 gb DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Raedon 340 MB dedicated Ram
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Built in
    Screen Resolution
    1366 x 768
    Hard Drives
    640 GB (spinner) Sata II
    Keyboard
    Built in
    Mouse
    Touch pad
Interesting - I'll look into that next time I go round to the MIL's. Off hand I can't remember.

[edit]

Did some searching and came across this...

Windows 7 Help Forums > Windows 7 help and support > General Discussion » Set default action for CD/DVD/BD/Etc

shoelessinsight said:
Sorry to join this discussion late, but I just ran across this thread while looking for the same information. Since I couldn't find any answers on the internet, I did some trial and error in my Windows 7 Registry and quickly found a solution.


For data discs, such as game DVDs, my default has always been "Open" without any registry edits. If I recall correctly, I made that change through the Autorun dialog, as Ztruker suggested, but it didn't work for movie discs. To make "Open" the default for movie DVDs and BDs, follow the instructions below.


First, I give everyone the standard disclaimer that editing the Windows Registry carries the risk of damaging your Windows installation, so proceed with caution if you decide to make these changes.


Open your Registry Editor by pressing the "Windows" key + "R", and then typing "Regedit" (without quotes) in the "Run" window.


Open "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT", then scroll down until you find "DVD". Open that key and click on the key labeled "shell".


In the right pane you will see an entry titled "Default", which probably has a value like "Play" or "PlayWithPowerDVD". Double-click on "Default" and change the value to "Open" (without quotes).


This seemed to affect my Blu-ray discs as well, but there is also a "BluRay" key in "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT". For good measure, I made the same change to the "shell" key there as well. I could not find any key for "CD", so the above two changes should be enough.


The changes take effect immediately, so right click on your DVD drive to test it. It worked like a charm for me.


This fix took me all of ten minutes to find and test, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing a few cases where that annoying "Play" default will still show up. If anybody finds anything, let me know.


Good luck!
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 7 & 8
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