Front Row and DVD Player problem on Intel iMac

[SickMouthy]

My girlfriend and I both got iMacs back in January and we've had pretty much no problems with them at all (apart from my stupid wireless router, which is resolved), until this last week or two, when we've had an irritating problem with my girlfriend's iMac (mine is fine and dandy, huzzah!).

The other day we tried playing a DVD on it, and DVD Player started bouncing in the dock, bounced about three dozen times, and then vanished without playing the disc. We also couldn't get Front Row to open, either with Menu on the remote or via the keyboard shortcut.

We've tried on numerous occasions with an array of DVDs since, and neither programme is working. The DVD drive itself appears to be fine, as the disc appears as an icon as you'd expect in the topright of the desktop. We've also loaded and got information successfully from data DVDs, just not movies.

We've scanned for software updates, and nothing is due, and my girlfriend's had a trawl around the official Mac forums and has found a few other people with the same Front Row problem, but no one seemingly reporting DVD Player not working.

Does anybody here have any suggestions, short of doing a full OS reinstall, which we see as a last resort?

Thanks,

Nick.

 

[CANEHDN]

The first thing I always try with hardware issues it to turn off the unit and unplug the power for about 30 secs. That usually fixes a lot of problems. I would at least give that a try.

If that doesn't work you could do a restore. This restores system files without erasing the entire drive. Make sure to still back anything up, just in case.