I began a thread with asking how to add an auto-play function into a DVD. After bringing my rig into work and messing with different disc there is something wrong. Unsure if this should be posted here or in the Blank Media forum.
At home I have two copies of a Corp Video (MPEG-2) on Ridata disc that where burnt using Nero at 4x, and then checked by KProbe, with no problems. The original disc is a 4x Verbatim, unsure what burner was used or what software. When I place one of these disc into my computer, the auto-run starts and WMP starts playing the video with no problems.
In my system I have Pioneer 109 (master) and LiteOn DVD-ROMs 166 on the Primary IDE & Pioneer 109 (master) and LiteOn DVD-ROM 167 on the Secondary IDE (I suppose I should change my Signature). When I place a disc in the Pioneer that is on the Primary IDE cable, the disc works. But in any of the other optical drives they don’t work (any other MEPG-2 will play in all 3 optical drives). Auto-play is configured to use WMP, the lights on the DVD-ROM &\or writer blink, and when I go into My Computer and right click I can not select play I can only open, explore, or search. When I open the disc and try and go into the Audio_TS or Video_TS folders, the folders are not visible. Windows can not read the file; however, normally when Windows can not read a file, you click the file and are given the option to use ‘Open With’ and look for a program to open the file, this does not happen. Since WMP 10 and WinDVD v.7 are installed, and will play other MPEG-2 video, I’m perplexed why this can not happen . On a stand alone DVD player, there’s no problem. Also, I have an image of the video on my hard drive and can mount it and auto play will run and the video appears, when I do this, nothing changes with the three other disc.

I took the master verbatim disc and placed it in my computer, and the same. We tried this in 3 different computers, one with a Pioneer 110 and a LG DVD-ROM and the other has a Pioneer 106 and a CD-ROM. Both computers have XP-Pro SP1&2, WMP 10 & WinDVD, Nero 6.0. Not one computer would play anything. I rebooted and tried the again in my system and behold some disc would work in different drives and some would not. In the system that has the 110, after rebooting some disc would work and some would not. Now, some disc that would work in my system would not work in the 110 system and vise-versa.

Now here’s the real kicker. In the system with the Pioneer 106, it would not read or play anything. We tired copying an image to the hard drive using Nero 6, and then burn this onto a Samsung DVD+R disc. We where able to burn but could not play this disc in that computer, it would however, play sometimes in the two other machines. This machine would play other DVD's (MPEG-2) with no problems .

In each machine we have Computer Administrator rights; there are no secondary accounts or logon. Also, on all three machines the ASPI is installed and working.

The only consistent thing that we notice was that getting any of these disc’s to play was random. Re-booting did nothing, trying to open the disc using WMP or WinDVD would not work, opening the disc as a file would not work, but you could copy it using Nero even though Windows could not read or open the disc, any disc Verbatim, Samsung or Ridata!
Something is amiss here or are we haunted? Can anyone help?

As in your other entry, I stated that different media works differently in different drives. Please post your kprobe scan of both the ritek media, and the samsung media. Riteks only work good (when they are good), in certain players/burners. Samsung is also low qrade media. If you are doing any work for fee base, you should use nothing but Taiyo Yuden, or Verbatim.

Also, what version of NERO are you using? Have you tried other burning softwares to see if it is your nero, or its encoder that are the problem?

Harley2ride thanks for your reply. Sorry I did not reply earlier, it’s been crazy busy with Xmas and all.
I’m using Nero 6.6, which has never given me a problem before. I tried using DVD Shrink, just to see what would happen and it said that it was unable to open Video_TS.IFO 2. As a rule I would think that this is a problem with the disc. However, since this happens at Radom with the same disc and in different machine’s/DVD-Player/burner, I believe that there may be a problem with the actual file from the master.
Speaking with the fellow who produced the video, he said that there is 6 minutes of video before the menu appears, this is the first time he has ever made a video with that long of an intro before the menu. Of course, he thought that I was nuts because of the problems that we been having. He will remove all but 4-6 seconds of the intro, and so my hope that this will fix the problem.
Also, I’ll have to search these forums to find out how to post the KProbe results.

Run cdspeed quality scans on both your original dvd, and your ritek copy. If you don't have cdspeed, use kprobe. Even though your original dvd was verbatim, doesn't mean it's a good verbatim. Some verbatims are very cheap and low quality. It depends on what the media code is. You can find media code with nero, dvdinfopro, or other assorted programs. Post that information back here. If it were me, I would just recopy the original to a good hiqh quality dvd and retest. I would bet that it will work fine then!