i have a samsung sd-608 i just tossed in my mechine after years in a box. It reads data cd's and music fine but when i try to play a movie in totem the light on the drive blinks in a stedy pattern for about a minute then i get an error that says Failed to play audio/video disk check to make sure the disk is in the drive

anyone have the same problem before?

as always im greatful for help

You could check your logs to see it an IO error is mentioned. They will also indicate if and how the DVD is mounted. It could be that the place where Mandrake mounts the dvd isn't where Totem is looking for it.

A first step may be to see if the dvd is being mounted, or can be mounted. One possible reason could be a problem with the DVD itself, so try other DVDs and see if you have the same problem.

where do i find the logs?

ACK.. does my distro say mandrake oops forgot to change that im useing fedora core4 now
i tried a few dvds all of them failed the same way

There are a number of logs in the /var/logs/ directory. Which logs are produced are configured in a configuration file for syslogd or syslog-ng. The /var/log/messages log will probably be the one you want to look at. It is the general log file. There may also be a /var/log/warn. Use the tail command like this: tail -n 30 -f /var/log/messages
Then put a DVD in the drive. The -f option is for follow. The last 30 messages will be displayed, and the -f option causes tail to follow any new messages.

There is also the "mount" command without options which lists mounts, as well as the /etc/mtab file with is dynamically updated. In your case, you are interested in the device location.

Also check the configuration file for Totem. There may be a place where "DVD:/" is defined. On some systems, there is a /dev/dvd device link created dynamically by dvd and the dvd system if a DVD disk is detected. If it is a cd, then a /dev/cdrom would be created instead. This behavior may be distro dependent as well as distro version dependent.

Sometimes, a program may start looking for a device, before the system can read the disc and automount it. It may be better to have things setup so that the program is setup as the default application, according to the hotplug/udev system, rather then starting totem first. Ideally, what happens is after the type of medium is determined, a requestor pops up asking you if you want to play the DVD. You can set Totem as the default. I wouldn't recommend checking the "Don't ask me next time box"

Lastly you could always have a dirty or scratched disk or the drive may have a dirty or worn head. In my experience, DVD discs aren't anywhere near the durability they were advertised as being and are much more fragile than DVD. Disney wanted DVDs to be designed to only be able to play for a certain time period. Sort of like the tape recording from a Mission Impossible episode. Perhaps the manufacturers are manufacturing disk with "Planned Obsolescence." in mind to keep Hollywood happy.

Programs that play CDROMs or DVDs actually read the media through the device (e.g. /dev/sr0 or /dev/cdrom) rather than using the mount point. So in Totem or Xine, the DVD:/ section will be set up to a device location rather than something like /mnt/cdrom or /media/cdrom.

That did it watching lionking as i type thanx