Despite the fact that DVD and BluRay players are increasingly in disuse in desktop PCs, they are still a very present element in the industry, and proof of this is that, without going any further, game consoles continue to use them. These optical devices are quite prone to stop working due to dirt or physical damage, and if you have a DVD or BluRay player that doesn’t read discs, in this article we are going to show you how you can fix it .
Generally, when a DVD or BluRay drive does not read a disc, it is usually the fault of the disc and not the reader itself. However, you could blame the disk when it is only one that does not read, but if the unit begins to give you problems with many disks or is not directly able to read any then it is clear that the problems lie with the reader unit and not on the discs themselves.
How to fix a DVD or BluRay drive that won’t read discs
If the DVD or BluRay reader drive appears in the Windows device manager (this can be easily checked by right-clicking on the Start button -> Device Manager and checking if the drive is present), the problem usually has a solution quite simple although a little laborious.
It is understood that you have already made sure that the discs you are trying to read are not scratched and that they are clean, so it is most likely that if the reader unit does not read any disc, the problem is that the transport of the unit has jammed, probably due to vibrations, shocks, or a build-up of dirt.
The laser head transport of the reader / writer units moves too far towards the center of the axis and is jammed enough that the transport mechanism cannot move it backwards. This is what you should do to check and fix the DVD / BluRay drive:
First of all, you must open the drive tray to somehow access its interior; If we are talking about a laptop reader, you will not need to disassemble anything because the reader head “comes out” along with the tray, but if it is an optical drive for a PC or a console, you will have to remove it to be able to access it. in the first case because the head is not in the tray and in the second because they do not even have a tray.
Once you have access to the head, you should remove the dust and dirt around it very carefully (really, very carefully) using a clean microfiber cloth impregnated with a little isopropyl alcohol , or you can even use a cotton swab of the ears also impregnated (that does not ooze liquid). Be very careful not to “scratch” the lens, as if the lens is damaged the unit will be completely useless.
Once the area is clean use a small, blunt object such as a metal paper clip or the tip of a plastic pen to gently but firmly move the transport away from the central axis to the outside. Once this is done, clean and remove any dirt that may be in the area where the transport was using the previous method, and we insist that isopropyl alcohol is a great ally to ensure that the area is perfectly clean.
Once everything is completely clean, leave the reading head outside and close the tray or remount the unit. It is important to leave it out because the next time you turn on the computer, the DVD / BluRay reader itself will automatically search for the correct center ring again (the unit may make “weird” noises because of this “, but it will automatically align itself and should Recognize the discs again.
If with this you have not been able to fix the problems of the DVD / BluRay drive and it still does not read any disc, it is likely that the laser is damaged and you will have to change the unit for a new one.
Driver problems
In the previous section we told you how to fix a DVD or BluRay drive that does not read any disc, be it on a PC, laptop or console, but there are times when the problem is not that the unit is bad but that there are problems with the firmware or software that prevents you from recognizing the discs. If the unit does appear in the Device Manager as we mentioned at the beginning, one of the first things you should try is to force the reinstallation of its drivers, so directly in this tool click with the right button on the drive and select Uninstall.
Once this is done, restart the PC and Windows will install the correct driver for your DVD / BluRay drive again and the problem should be solved. If not, go back to Device Manager, right-click on the drive and in this case select Properties. In the “Driver” tab, check if the “Revert to a previous driver” option is enabled and, if so, click on it and follow the wizard.
After doing this, restart the computer again and see if the problem has been solved.
What if the PC doesn’t detect the drive?
Again, all of the above assumptions are based on the system detecting the drive but the drive is not reading any disc, but what if the operating system doesn’t even detect the drive? If the device appears in Device Manager but appears with a yellow exclamation mark, uninstalling the device and rebooting so that Windows will install the driver again should fix the problem, but what if it doesn’t appear anywhere?
In that case the problem can be caused by two things: that the unit is completely dead or that it is not connected properly. In the first case obviously you will have to buy a new DVD / BluRay reader, but in the second case there is something you can do and obviously that is to check the connections. DVD / BluRay drives on PC have two cables, the power cable and the data cable, so you should check that both are properly connected (disconnect and connect again at both ends to make sure) and, in any case, change the cables for new ones.
If after checking that the cables are properly connected and even changing the connections the problem persists, it is likely that the unit is definitely dead and you will have to change it.
