“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.
Related posts:
Toshiba Satellite M45 laptop freezes up after playing a DVD movie for about 30 minutes to an hour
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April 19th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
how bout try to check your power options, Toshiba power options such as hard drive hibernation and power for the CPU, the power for the CPU might be also a factor because if you lower down the power input for the CPU you make the speed slower and therefore reducing computing power
May 6th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
The problem is actually much simpler to fix. I’m sorry you wasted many $$ trying to fix this problem.
The video and audio become choppy because the read/write mode on the ide controller for the drive (device 1) had somehow been changed to PIO mode (Program Input Output), instead of DMA. This puts all of the load of streaming data from the drive on the processor. and at 4.5 gigs for a movie that is a huge load.
The fix is to simply uninstall the secondary IDE controller from within Device Manager and reboot the machine. This forces windows to reinstall the drivers for the drive, and the default mode is set to Ultra DMA 2. Of course reistalling windows dd fix the problem, but at the cost of much time and patience.
May 6th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Hey Pete,
Thank you for your comment. I’ll try it next time when I have to repair a laptop with the same problem. Fortunately, I didn’t spend any $$ because the laptop was under the warranty.
BTW, check out the comment 88 in this post. Do you thin that Peter experiencing the same problem?
May 7th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
I am having a problem with my A10. I deleted the video drivers (there were two listed) by mistake (long story) and now whenever I try to restore them it tells me that it is denied access. I looked on the toshiba site and couldn’t see the drivers listed. The drivers are still on my machine I just need to get them to re-install. Can you tell me how?
Also do you sell power supplys / CD drives for a 4600?
Regards
Rob
May 7th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Rob,
Do you login to your laptop as an administrator? If you are logged in as an admin, you shouldn’t have a problem when you restore the driver. Have you tried the Roll Back Driver option? I believe it’s available only in Windows XP.
In the device manager locate display adapters. Right click on an available adapter and open properties. On the driver tag you’ll find Roll Back Driver. If you click on this button the video driver would be reverted to the previous installed version.
On the Toshiba website you should be able to find the video driver for your laptop.
BTW, I do not sell any laptop parts.
August 4th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
If the dvd player is distorted on sound and image quality,try increasing the video ram,add 32mb and that should help,but it will reduce memory to the computer processor which will be 64mb,so if you have 256 it will only show 192 after the update,go to the toshiba downloads site and install the bio vid update,it was listed for my s1216 series,hope this may help
August 11th, 2006 at 1:53 am
Hello, I’m a Microsoft certified technician stationed in Great Falls, MT. I have located a solution to this problem, dealing with the TS-L642C model drive. You need to upgrade the firmware on the drive itself to eliminate this problem. Visit this site and select the “TG00″ version to download. Then download the frashing application here . Create a shortcut to this flashing application, with a space and a “-nocheck” (with the “) after it. Execute the flashing app via the shortcut, select the downloaded firmware from the first link, and ignore any prompts about the software being “older”. Select the “start download” button at the top left corner of the flashing app, and your good to go after a quick restart.
August 19th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
By mistake I deeleted the sound program in the add/remove program/controlpanel.
Now I don not have any sound at all I can not find the hardware name for the sound device it shows “unknown” and therefore I can not find the driver PLEASE HELP!
PLEASE
August 20th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
claude ranupas,
What is your laptop, is it Toshiba?
Usually you can reinstall a missing driver from a recovery CD/DVD disk. When you open it up, you should see a menu that allows reinstalling the driver.
The second option would be to download it from the manufacturer website.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
My Toshiba Satellite wont recognise it has a dvd/cd player in the My Computer menu. I can put in a dvd and the light flashes but nothing happens. I have done System Restore without success and rolled back the driver but it said I already had the best driver. It is under warranty so probably my next option…
Any ideas?
Lyn
August 31st, 2006 at 12:19 am
Lyn,
Try booting the laptop from any bootable CD or DVD. If the laptop boots fine, then it might be a software issue and it will not be covered under warranty. In this case you can backup all important information from the hard drive and after that re-image the hard drive. Start the laptop from the recovery CD/DVD and follow the wizard. BACKUP the hard drive before you re-image the drive!!!
If the laptop will not boot form a bootable CD, then you might have a bad optical drive. The replacement should be covered under Toshiba warranty.
Sometimes it happens because of a loose connection between the drive and the motherboard and reseating the drive can fix the problem.
Check out my previous post about disappeared CD-ROM drive.
September 4th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
A question in regards to toshi l25. Mostly directed to pete. I uninstalled the secondary IDE controller from within Device Manager and rebooted. It said “new device found cd dvd etc”, but never installed. Am i to find the restore disc and put that in the drive…A little confused I cant find the original restore disc, and now it shows no cd/dvd drive in My Computer. No sound plays at all either. A little help please
January 18th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
I have a problem with my Toshiba Laptop!
I started it up like normal, and it didn’t boot all the way up. There was a line through the screen and the letters were jumbled. Is there anyway to fix it? Will Toshiba replace it if not? It is only about a year old.
January 18th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Melinda Wyles,
If you purchased this laptop less then 1 year ago, it still should be covered by Toshiba warranty. Call Toshiba and find out your warranty status or you can check it here.
April 9th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
The problem is actually much simpler to fix. I’m sorry you wasted many $$ trying to fix this problem.
The video and audio become choppy because the read/write mode on the ide controller for the drive (device 1) had somehow been changed to PIO mode (Program Input Output), instead of DMA. This puts all of the load of streaming data from the drive on the processor. and at 4.5 gigs for a movie that is a huge load.
The fix is to simply uninstall the secondary IDE controller from within Device Manager and reboot the machine. This forces windows to reinstall the drivers for the drive, and the default mode is set to Ultra DMA 2. Of course reistalling windows dd fix the problem, but at the cost of much time and patience.
Thank You!
April 10th, 2007 at 9:31 pm
James Zois,
Thank you. I didn’t know that. Next time when I have a similar issue I’ll try that.
June 16th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Just to confirm James s absolutely correct – I just performed the secondary IDE controller fix and it works.
Previously I had been in touch with Tosh Support (UK) who first suggested uninstall and reboot of the DVD drive, then (wait for it…) finally offered either a system restart (whcih they menetioned hd teh side effect of losing all 50GB of my personal data – or sending the machine in for them to have a look at – which would translate as being without a computer for three weeks and a big bill.
Thank you very much
p.s. Am I alone in liking this machine, but being very disappointed by common faults – I’m on the web it seems like once a month sorting out hardware issues… Can’t really recommend them…
September 13th, 2007 at 11:13 am
I had the same problem with play back and audio, uninstall the secondary IDE controller from within Device Manager and reboot the machine as per post 15 and it worked, holy pickles I was about to chuck this 2 bit laptop from the 11th floor…. Thank you!
December 17th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Removing the second IDE channel worked for me, too! But you don’t even need to restart…after it removes the channel, click on the parent IDE controllers (what the second IDE channel was nested under) and choose Scan for Hardware Changes. No need to wait for the reboot…it’ll work after that!
Thanks SO much for this fix!
March 8th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Thank you!!!!
I removed the second IDE channel. It was stuck in PIO mode. After uninstalling it, i scanned it for changes, it reinstalled and voila! DVD movies work perfectly again! I’ve had this problem for months with no luck until today. Thanks again.
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?
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?
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
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
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:31 pm
OMG… thank you! It’s been nearly 2 years and I haven’t been able to play DVDs on this laptop. I was told I’d have to get a whole new DVD drive… and here it got fixed in two seconds!
Love it!
Thank you!
September 21st, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Thank all you guys that posted the solution.
I have an Acer TravelMate 3273 which has only DVD/CD rom.
All a sudden all the audio (DVD or CD) played has static noise. I spent weeks to try to look for information to fix it. Today I alreay decided to sent it for repair even though it is out of waranty already.
I tried another search by using “Notebook repair” and found this site. After some wild search, I got here. It solves my problem by following the suggestion. Since I have no floppy drive, I changed the primary channel instead of the secondary. I also had to restart the computer.
I then search the web to see if I find any cue that the mood was set to PIO. From the Microsoft Hardware help centre, I found out if the rom have a read error continuously for more than 6 times. WIN XP will change the mood setting from DMA to PIO. I had a read error due to a crash of a dvd rw formatted by Nero. Therefore my ATA mood setting was changed to PIO.
Therefore if you put an unreadable disc into your optical drive, make sure you check the ATA mood setting right away.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I’ve had my Toshiba Satellite for a year without being able to play DVDs. Thanks so much for such a quick, easy and cheap fix!
February 10th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
It really works – was about to buy new DVD drive
and found this site
Tried your suggestion and problem solved
THANKS SO MUCH
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Thank you, Rob!! I’ve had my laptop for 2 yrs with no problems until this last week. I thought for sure I needed a new DVD drive. I was searching for possible solutions and came upon this site. Your fix took 1 minute and worked perfectly. Thank you soooooo much!!
March 10th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Thank you sooo much! My DVD/CD drive has had distorted sound for quite a while now and I have not found a solution until now.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:01 am
hi,
i have SATELLITE L10-194 note book.
i was playing flash games, suddenly sound distoted,
at that time i tink that it may be game problem, but
when i closed the game and played a movie, it was shoking,
the sound i am hearing is only surroundings sound and
main charactor sound is muted, (like karaoke), i also hear the music, amazing… my brain is getting blown, how is it possible?….
steps taken>>> sound drivers reinstalled—- result same
tried morethan two headphones- result same
finally recovered(withoriginal dvd) —- same
hint—– some videos & clips having 16bit or 64bit
audio are playing good sound…
Request— please help me… Thanks in advance.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
logicbrain,
At this point I cannot tell if you problem is software or hardware related.
Have you checked all sound settings? I belied if you reinstall the driver, it might keep the old settings
Have you tried using Windows system restore utility? Try restoring Windows back to the time when it had good sound.