Toshiba Satellite L25-S1215 does not play DVDs correctly. The video and the sound output distorted.
“My DVD drive is not operating properly. It can play music CDs but when it plays DVDs the video and the sound are distorted.” It was my customer’s complaint about his Toshiba Satellite L25-S1215 laptop.
The following laptop troubleshooting steps helped me to fix the problem. The laptop booted to Windows pretty fast without any errors, with a normal hard drive sound and spinning CPU fan. I restarted the laptop couple times and didn’t notice anything abnormal. I tested the optical drive with a generic data CD and a DVD movie. The drive recognized the data CD and all files on it but refused to play the DVD correctly. The video and sound output from the DVD movie was choppy, skipping scenes. It looked like a defective DVD drive and I ordered a replacement from Toshiba under warranty. I was pretty sure that a new DVD drive will fix the problem, but it didn’t. After I replaced the DVD drive the same problem occurred right away. The laptop had 256MB memory installed and 64MB were reserved for the video memory. I blamed a lack of memory and installed an extra 512MB memory stick and it didn’t help either. My guess about a corrupted video driver was wrong too because after I downloaded and reinstalled the driver the DVD video still was distorted. In cased like this, when we are not sure what is causing the problem the software or the hardware, we always install a test hard drive and reload the original factory software. I installed a test HDD and reloaded Toshiba Satellite L25 restore CD. After that the problem with a distorted video and audio output was fixed and I was able to play the movie for 2 hours without errors. Most likely, the problem with playing DVD occurred because of corrupted software.
If you have a similar problem with your laptop, do not rush to replace the DVD drive. Backup the important data and run a restore CD, it might fix your problem.
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Entry Filed under: Everyday Laptop Repair
July 18th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
thank you rob, it worked PERFECTLY!!!
i had no idea what else to do, and theres this problem on other sites but no one figured it out
June 9th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Thanks switching worked great…for those that need more help..
1. Right click on the “My Computer” icon on the desktop
2. Hit “Properties”
3. Hit “Hardware” tab
4. Push “Device Manager” button
5. Hit “+” sign next to “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers”
6. Right click on “Secondary IDE Channel” and “uninstall”
7. Right click on “IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers” and “scan for hardware changes”
Computer should now re-install driver, right click and check properties of “Secondary IDE Channel” Under the “advanced properties” tab it should say “DMA if available” for transfer mode
June 5th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
i have trouble with the dvd being distorted on my toshiba satellite L25 S1215 also. I don’t have a restore cd since i bought my laptop at a pawn shop. What do I do to fix the dvd or where can get a restore cd?
May 21st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I don’t have this particular laptop, but I have an Acer and the same thing is happening to it, and the same thing happened to my roommate’s Dell. How do I do this IDE thing?