DVD Error (help!)

Question

hallo. the reason i am writing today is because i am getting the following error message when i insert a dvd that i just rented from my local retailer:
"You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read. To continue with the disk inserted, click ignore."
i don't understand why this is coming up all of a sudden. i just played a few other dvd's last weekend and nothing bad at all happened. my retail cd's play nicely in the drive, i also have no problems playing burned cd-r's, and no problems burning them in itunes. as this isn't a superdrive (i have a combo), i cannot burn dvd's, so this isn't related to burning--only playing.
normally when i insert a dvd, the player automatically comes up and starts playing, per my system preferences (which i've checked and they are still the same). now it isn't launching at all. when i manually launch the player, everything about it is fine, but it doesn't "see" that there is a dvd inserted in the drive.
i thought that maybe it was because it was the wrong region coding, but the dvd i'm trying to watch is region 1. then i thought it was because it was dirty, but when cleaned the same thing happens. then i tried playing a dvd of my own that i know should work because i've watched it a million times w/o any problems, and i get the same message (my dvd's are kept crystal clean).
i am using a 12" powerbook g4 with (now) os x 10.3.9 (just upgraded this morning--was prev. using 10.3.4 i think???). in the system profiler under "ata" it's reading that there is a matshita cd-rw cw-8123 drive, and under "drive type" is "cd-rw/dvd-rom" so i don't see anything wrong.
i don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but the other day i updated my version of itunes to ver 6.0.2 using the system updater, tried to upgrade to quicktime 7 (the freebie on the apple website) but it said that it wouldn't mount (???) so i threw it away (i think it was because it requires 10.3.9 which i hadn't updated to yet), added disk utility to the dock so my roommate could deal with her cd-rw's (previous to this week my computer had only burned cd-r's), and downloaded macscan from securemac.com.
other than quicktime, i had not encountered any problems of any kind during the installations and updates. then last night i tried playing the dvd and it wouldn't play due to the error above. i thought that maybe something got lost during the updates so i upgraded to 10.3.9 and that didn't help. then i upgraded to itunes 6.0.3 thinking that maybe something in the previous itunes upgrade killed my dvd drivers while they were asleep (itunes has been know to do things like that, you know!) and that didn't work. (can't say i'm totally surprised, it was a little far fetched...but itunes is pretty vicious.)
now i'm plumb out of ideas. does anyone have any suggestions? has anyone else encountered this before? i'm really hoping to have my question answered here, as i'm sick with the flu and don't have the energy to call apple or run all over town trying to get this fixed. if somebody has a fix for this here, i'd really appreicate it. cheers all. kj.

Answer 1

Hey Kristov,
Reload OS X 10.4 from disc using the "archive and install" option. It will force you to choose between that and "erase and install," anyway. Repair disc permissions. Update all your software, but avoid the OS X 10.4.5 Combo update. Go to "Downloads" and get the update to OS X 10.4.4. Repair disc permissions again. Get the OS X 10.4.5 update and, again, repair disc permissions. Everything should work just fine after that. It may be that you can abbreviate the process I described, but after reading a bunch of posts both here, on Macfixit, and on Macintouch, I decided it was the only way to ensure the problem didn't recur. In fact, although I doubt it made a difference, I repaired disc permissions both after each download and after each subsequent restart to finish update installation. In any case, I now have all the latest updates and my machine is working better than ever, no kidding, including DVD Player.
Good Luck,
Jonathan