Pavillion N3270 DVD driver

[Steven Jones_4]

I have an N3270 which I have upgraded. I have a 20Gig HD, which the original Bios recognized, and it runs fine. I also have experimented with memory and am currently running 512Megs, even thought the published HP max is 256Megs. The system seems to run fine for most applications, providing I keep the background useage reasonable. I am also running XP Professional, even though HP does not support it, and it runs fine as well. No chokes to speak of, even while running the new Goggle Earth.
My big issue with this unit (which is the oldest of my HP's - I own three of them) is that the DVD player will not run the newer DVD's. I runs fine on older DVD's like the original Matrix, but the newer ones it chokes on. It appears that neither HP or Toshiba support the drivers and I am a bit leary of looking into 3rd party sites, as I have run into some problems before with them. Any suggestions??

[Rich S]

I have 2 vintage HP 8670C Pavilions and I had problems playing DVD's until I replaced the original DVD with a NEW Sony DVD burner. That solved all the problems. You are right that if the drivers are not upgraded, they will not be able to read some of the new formats that are being produced. My Sony only cost me $80 and it burns every format out there including double sided. You can buy a generic flavor of DVD like Liteon for about $40. And of course you get the latest drivers to go with it.
I do not know what CPU you have in your PC, but there is a minimum required of 1.2 ghz for burning a lot of the formats I mentioned.

The only other component that seems to restrict DVD usage is the amount of memory on the video card but most will play a basic DVD with 8mb of ram.

Rich