MacBook Pro superdrive rejects most DVDs

T

Thank The Cheese

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Hello everyone, I'l pulling me hair out here and am after some help. I'm having some issues with my MBP superdrive and am trying to diagnose the problem so I know whether it is worth returning for repair.

From what I can tell the superdrive:

- Plays 'proper' DVDs fine (I have played many DVD movies and installed many apps and games without a problem)
- Has about a 30% success rate with DVD-Rs with data installed
- A 100% success rate with DVD-Rs with DVD movies on them
- A 0% success rate with UDF formatted DVD-Rs with data on them
- 100% success rate with CDs and CD-Rs
- No issues burning DVD-Rs through Toast, though it can take up to 10 minutes before it starts writing the lead-in for some reason (could be because Toast in running through rosetta?)

I have tried in both OS X and Windows XP via boot camp with the same issues, so it doesn't seem to be a software issue AFAIK.

Does anyone know of a way I can test once and for all whether this is a hardware, firmware, or software issue? It looks like I'm not the only one who had this issue, and I probably will need to take it in, but this is a very busy time work-wise and I don't want to put myself through that unless it's absolutely necessary.

Appreciate the help :)

From System Profiler:

Firmware Revision: HAE4
Interconnect: ATAPI
Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipped/Supported)
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +RW
Burn Underrun Protection CD: Yes
Burn Underrun Protection DVD: Yes
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, DVD-DAO
Media:
Media Type: DVD-R
Blank: No
Erasable: No
Overwritable: No
Appendable: No
 
Sounds like a hardware issue to me. If you're near an Apple Store, take it in to the "Genius" Bar armed with a few DVDs and show them. They may decide you have a bad drive and get it replaced for you. I know it would suck to be without my MacBook Pro for even a couple days, but they'll take care of it real fast!
 
yeah you're probably right. Reason why I'm stalling is because there are no Apple Stores in my city (i bought it online), so it becomes a whole lot more of a pain!
 
now I really am confused!

Today I transferred everything across to an external HD, ready to send the MBP off to Apple. I decided, now that all my files are safe in another location, I would try one last ditch effort to rule out software issues by formatting the HD. I thought this might help them diagnose the problem too if they had a clean install. To my surprise, the OS X install DVD worked, and installed fine.

Since then, everything that didnt work before is now working (?!). What could this mean?

I'm thinking it could perhaps have been a software update I installed, but then again, DVDs weren't working in Windows XP using boot camp either.

On the one hand I"m glad it's working, but on the other I'm not petrified one day -- when I least expect it -- it's going to happen again. urg!

now if you'll excuse me, I have about a million updates and applications to re-install...
 
Hi All,

My MBP seems to be rejecting some dvd's (movies) that I bought from the store. Out of the six dvd's that I bought, three ran fine without a hitch.

Two 'froze' after a while of error-free playing, and ejected automatically. I tried skipping the frozen chapter, which helped, but the dvd's got stuck again a little later. "DVD scratched or dirty" it said but the DVD's were brand new! Or, it said "The DVD player encountered an error from which it could not recover"

The worst was in the case of this one DVD whose audio and video got all messed up after playing perfectly initially. The sound stopped suddenly, and the picture was all garbled. I took this particular DVD to the local apple store, and played it on their MBP. I was a little encouraged to note that the audio-video mess started on their MBP, too, and at exactly the same point. (I haven't done the test on these other dvd's whose chapters froze). Anyway, what was interesting was that this very DVD whose audio-video was messed up on my MBP played perfectly fine on the store's DVD player. Does anyone have any idea what is happening? What do you recommend that I do?

1. Reinstal Os X
2. Get the superdrive replaced (I bought my MBP directly from apple)
3. Can you think of anything else?

I am new to macs. Your inputs will be deeply appreciated. Thanks in anticipation of your help.
 
take it back- i've had 2 macbooks here at work with dodgey optical drives, they're replaced straight away anyway
 
I don't know what it is but with any Mac as soon as I get the Mac the first thing I do is insert the Software restore disks and zero out the drive and reinstall. I have read many stories like this over the years.
 
Hey thanks! There's been another glitch. Perhaps you can make out if it is all related, or are there different things happening to the MBP.

(1) Maybe three or four times in these past ten days, my MBP took ages to boot. It shouldn't normally take more than 5 secs, but this was like 20 secs and the screen was blank although the hard drive was making all the usual
noises.
(2) In the middle of my work yesterday, the computer balnked out thrice. This happened while it was on the battery. I had to switch it back to power, even though there was 85% of the battery still remaining, and then it worked fine.

I approached apple tech supp with the first problem a few days back and they thought that it was a power management issue (we thought we had resolved that but obviously it hasn't). My question is:

Would reinstalling OSX help with these issues? Or, should I just send the MBP back to apple the way it is? It might be a good idea to save my stuff on an EHD, don't you think so? Thanks a lot again.
 
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