dvd-r will not play on my laptop

I have burned several DVDs on my PC; they play fine on my PC, as well as both of my home DVD players. However they will not play on my laptop. (Toshiba Satellite) Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this work?

I think you may forget to finalize your dvd disc. I burned some dvd-r on my Panasonic dvd recorder, it won't play on my Toshiba laptop or other dvd player if I don't finalize the disc on the dvd recorder.

i have write a dvd with my old dvd recorder and i forgot o finalize it, so i can't play it with my pc and can'y finalize it.

what can i do?
thanks
Arash

John, DVD players on Windows laptops are frequent problems. I use a Toshiba at the office and had a similar problem. Autoplay was deselected for the DVD drive by default. Go figure. (Must be a Windows conspiracy to make people's lives miserable.)

Activating Autoplay helped but did not cure the problem, as it still comes up occasionally. When that happens, I remove the DVD, launch the DVD player software (WinDVD in this case), and then re-insert the DVD into the drive. WinDVD seems to find it then. Again, go figure. (My Mac looks better every day.)

If that still doesn't work, try launching the DVD player on the laptop, and asking it to manually open the DVD. I've had to do that a couple times, and it usually worked.

The last thing to check is whether the problem goes away with a different brand of disk. Some players are unreliable with certain brands of disks.

Good luck.

Bob Rice

Hi all.


I did not know it was even possible to play a DVD that is "unfinalized."

I know that you can use unfinalized CDs, but I do not understand how it could even be possible to play an unfinalized DVD.

Please explain.


-DH

It is possible, though few people create DVDs in a way where it's likely to happen.

If you simply copy the VIDEO_TS folder to a DVD, you are creating a data DVD. Some copy programs give you the option of leaving the disk open (sometimes called "not closed". That allows you to add more stuff to the disk later. So, if you are simply copying the folders, you have the potential to create what you think is a video DVD that is still open -- and therefore unusable on many DVD players.

Whenever you use a DVD application (like DVDSP) to burn the disk, it will always be closed. I'm not sure if Toast gives you the option.

Bob Rice