My computer won't acknowledge the DVD drive

[Madeleined98]

I have an HP ENVY x360 that uses Windows 10 64-bit.  For the last three months I've used an external DVD drive and the DVD Player app to watch movies without any difficulty.  However, when I inserted a DVD earlier today, the little message asking me what I want to do didn't pop up.  The DVD spun for a minute and then stopped.  When I pulled up DVD Player, it acted like I hadn't inserted the DVD.  File Explorer doesn't acknowledge the DVD drive.  What should I do?

[DaveLembke]

Did you try a different disc. Some are protected from piracy and dont play on computers.

[Madeleined98]

I did, but the computer didn't recognize that one either.  Anyway, the first disc worked yesterday, so I don't think that's the case.

[DaveLembke]

You can try a drive cleaning disc. It spins up and cleans the eye inside that reads the reflected laser beam off the disc. You can also try the drive on a different system to make sure its the drive and not a driver issue with the system connecting to it since its an external drive. The good thing is that external USB drives are pretty cheap these days, around $20 if you had to replace it.