“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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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.
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!!
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
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!
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.
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!
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?