abushell

I have a Macbook Pro 15, 2.16ghz. Tiger OS X 10.4.
I have a LG GW8040MA Rev 039 dvd player.

My problem is that no dvd icon appears when I insert a dvd. I have looked in applications but it is not there ?? could it be hiding somewhere else and why does it not pop up when a dvd is inserted.

regards

Alan:

ShosMeister

Do regular CDs work? Do you hear the drive spinning? Have you tried the DVD in another player (other machine or regular player)? I've heard a number of people that have had problems with the CD/DVD drives in the MacBooks and ended up replacing them. Not sure if it was a bad batch or what. If nothing shows up (CD or DVD) or it seems to work erratically, I'd suggest taking it in to get it replaced (if under warranty).

abushell

I have the usual dvd "region" problems, I no longer get the messages related to this and so can not change regions anymore, but non protected dvd's and cd's seem to work in general. It is the missing dvd icon that I can not find , i was wondering if it is possible to re-load this module ?

ShosMeister

Are you talking about the DVD Player or the DVD itself showing up on the desktop? If it's the player application, you should be able to reload that from the OS cd - while I've not had to try this, it should be possible using the custom install.

sinclair_tm

The Finder can be setup to not show DVD icons. When the Finder is selected, goto the menu item Finder>Preferences. There will be a tab that controls how the desktop works, giving you the option to have hard drives, DVDs, CDs, servers and such show up on the desktop. If it is a blank disk, you need to open the System Preferences from under the Apple menu and click on the DVD/CD item, there you can set what the Mac does with blank disks. If it's set to ignore, then nothing will happen when you put one in.
Now, is this on the internal drive, or the external drive? Also for region setting, you only have a limited number of times that you can change the region, once you have reached it, the drive will always only open DVDs of the last region selected. That is part of the hardware of the drive, and once it's locked by reaching the limit, there is nothing you can do to change it, except replace it.

abushell

The setings are ok and have ben selected to show VLC when a DVD is loaded, this is because I can't find DVD Player icon in my applications folder. Desktop shows all devices/drives that are inserted/hooked up to the laptop and they are handled successfully.
There are a couple of drives that can have firmware mods. to create multi region players but not mine, it is the LG GW4080MA ver:039.. model and from what I have seen on various web sites, can't be made to work with this method or even with VLC.
But I would like to get the dvd player icon back and take it from there

Thanks for the responses.

macthorough

Reset PRAM!

What does it say in system profiler for your optical drive?

Does your mac recognize your Apple install DVD? If so do an archive and install preserving users and network settings...

abushell

System lists device and settings/info ok, how is an install and archive done? is it via the original installation disks as I can find no refernce to this in the system folders.

macthorough

Use the install disks and make sure you check the box that say preserve users and network settings http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1710

abushell

Thanks will try that.