DVD drive acting strange

[Monaco]

I just got a DVD drive for my PC, and it's doing some weird things. I've never had a DVD drive before, so I don't know if this is par for the course, or what! :)

1. It takes forever to recognize a CD- 20-30seconds usually, sometimes it takes a few minutes

2. won't read some data discs at all, be they burned or manufactured, clean or scratched. For example, it can't read my Q3 disc.

3. It's able to play ANY DVD (so far!), no matter how scratched up it is.

4. Loading a DVD movie can take 30seconds or so.

can anyone tell me if these things are normal? I can swap it for another one if I need to, maybe just this unit is messed up?

thanks a ton for any advice or comments!

[SkaGoatMaster]

How fast of DVD drive is it? Make and model?

[DManeKid]

i have like a 6x dvd rom (it has a 24x read speed, its also a cdrw combo) and i have just as good load times as any other cd player i have used...what i do notice is that with this one game it can install it from that sc but it cant play the game from it...but other computers can. it has scratches in it so im just thinking that this dvd player doesnt like scratches and that my other ones dont mid it...well good luck my suggestion is just complaining about it to the maker and see if you can get a new one (or just try to bring it back to the store you got it from)

[repo man11]

I just bought a Toshiba 16x DVD/48x CD from Newegg. Just got it yesterday, and tried my first DVD tonight. It has been very quick to recognize and read CD's, actually faster than my 52X CDROM was. It was showing its age I think. The Aliens DVD I rented had a couple of scratches that gave it fits though, it locked up 3 times until I skipped past a bad spot. I even pulled it out and gave it the furniture polish treatment, but the bad section is more of a gouge than a scratch.
I hope this info helps.