Hello,

I bought a documentary in DVD-9 format from a Hong Kong retailer via mail, however when I put it in the my DVD-ROM to read it, only one disk works, the second disk's file structure is read by my computer; however the apparent size of files is 0 kb, the DVD players I have installed won't play this disk. I wonder if you could help me with ways I could get the disk working. I have tried the following and it is still not working (I have a HP-751 with Windows XP x86, a samsung sd-616F DVD-ROM):

1. Originally I expected this to be a region problem. However it is not, the disk's case strangely enough has a logo for region 1 here for the US. Regardless, I flashed the DVD-ROM firmware to the latest version, and even took the risk of making the drive region free. THe drive works fine, however it still won't read the disk.

2. This seems to be a failure in the windows software to detect the disk structure. The ISOBUSTER data retrieval program which bypasses windows detects the data in the disk (both UDF and ISO).

3. I thought maybe if I could install an UDF reader this might work, since the properties in explorer lists the directory structure of the
disk as UDF (Strangely, in the disks that work, the directory structure is listed as RAW). Well I installed one and it doesn't work.

4. I tried to install an adaptec ASPI driver as an alternative for an SPTI, however the adaptec ASPI driver does not seem function, and regardless, I do not know how to override the SPTI method

5. I upgraded Windows XP to the latest version (service pack 1xa). Nope.

So do you have any other alternatives besides getting a DVD-player (if so, which one by the way)? Thanks for your kind help.

If your system plays one disc but not the other then my guess is that the disc is faulty. Return it for a replacement

Try this:- http://www.cdrom-prod.com/cddvddiagnostic.html You should be able to recover everything from the disc, or as DM said send it back.