Why can't I play my DVD's on my CD-ROM?

I have a CD-ROM player and a DVD player on my computer. Lately I have been having some problems with the DVD drive and was trying to use the CD- ROM, I keeping getting an error message. Why won't my CD-ROM play my movies?

This question was answered on December 21, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

---

I see you are trying to play DVD's on your CD-ROM This will not work because DVD's are made diffrently than a CD

A CD and DVD have tracks; to explaine this a lot further, in the old days we listen to records similar to CD's and DVD's In a sense that the records had tracks (the valley and grooves) The needle rides in the grooves, where the infomation stored there produced sound, (music).

Now that you have some sort of understanding of tracks, CD's and DVD's are made simmilar except that the tracks in a DVD are more compressed so that more infomation can fit on a disk A CD-R0M can not play DVD's But a DVD player can play CD's because the technology is there to provide backward compatablity So my suggestion is to check your hardware connections and keep you player clean The other thing I forgot to mention is, the laser that reads the DVD's or CD's has a life on it The more you use it the more it is likley to burn out So this is another thing you will have to remember

About the author

Posted by Eugene of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on December 21, 2001

Need Help with this Issue?

We help people with technology! It's what we do.
Contact or Schedule an Appointment with a location for help!