Curious . . . it hadn't occurred to me to try swapping disks and computers. I put the Tracktion disks in my laptop and it appeared to read them fine. Then I put a movie in my DAW. WMP won't play it due to DRM, but it recognizes it and tells me what it is, and Windows Explorer tells me how much data is on the disk.

Now I'm trying to recall if I had ever loaded a DVD into this particular drive. I have other software on DVD, but I may have loaded it from a earlier DVD-ROM drive. The present unit is a DVD-R/W. They're cheap enough to replace if that's the issue.

To respond to Keith: The only other purchase I can recall from MF was a Planet Waves brand GK cable for my Roland VG-88. I got it cheap as a backup. When I finally opened it up it was horribly crackly and microphonic. I had had it too long to consider returning it, but I wasn't real happy about it. I replaced it with a $20 piece from ebay and threw out the $75 cable.

Now, can someone explain why PCs have a software DVD player if I can't watch anything with it?

"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."