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DVDs now mostly unreadable under OS X 10.6.4 but it's not hardware

I have a problem with getting this message when I insert DVDs into my Mac Pro

"The disc you inserted was not readable by this computer."

This occurs when I try most DVDs, such as a DVD containing scanned images I just got back from a scanning service. It occurs when I insert any DVD I have previously burned on this machine. Right now, about the only DVD I can open on my machine is the Mac OS X Snow Leopard installation disc.

When I boot up my Mac under Boot Camp in Windows XP SP3, I can read any DVD in my Mac under Windows. So I am presuming the problem is not bad DVD hardware.

Here's what I have tried:

1. Booting up in Safe Mode: I can only read the Snow Leopard DVD. Other DVDs spin up but then the drive stops, although I do not get an error message

2. Tried doing Repair Disc Permissions twice on my Mac boot drive. A bunch of things were fixed but not the DVD problem.

3. The discs I created previously on my Mac are easily read on a different Windows Vista laptop, so I think there is nothing wrong with the discs.

4. Discs created on my other Windows laptop are readable on my Mac when it's booted up in Windows but not when it's booted up in Snow Leopard.

Here's one other oddity:

I used TrueCrypt to keep an encrypted file container on my boot drive. I DO NOT encrypt the entire drive. It's just basically an encrypted filefolder. Just a few days ago, TrueCrypt has been unable to mount these encrypted files on this machine under Mac OS X. However, when I boot up under Windows, TrueCrypt, which has both OS versions, can read the file just fine.

I think I am going to reinstall Snow Leopard, but I thought I would ask here first.

Thanks, all.

Mac Pro 2008, Mac OS X (10.6.4), Snow Leopard 10.6.4, 2 Quadcore Xeon, 6GB RAM

Posted on Jul 11, 2010 8:17 AM

Reply
8 replies

Jul 11, 2010 10:47 AM in response to snsok

OK...definitely an operating system problem or something related to the OS such as an imcompatibility with something else.

I had an old harddrive around that I used for beta testing a commercial software. It was a bootable disk with 10.6.2 on it.

When I start my Mac with this disc and confirm I am in 10.6.2, my DVDs open normally in Finder. No "unreadable" problem. Even TrueCrypt works right.

I used my Snow Leopard disc to run Disk Utility and "repair" my main hard drive. That did not change anything.

I guess I will reinstall (without erasing) Snow Leopard from the original upgrade disc and then run all the subsequent upgrades. There goes the afternoon....

Any other ideas?

Jul 11, 2010 12:37 PM in response to snsok

Just finished reinstalling Mac OS X 10.6 from the original Snow Leopard disc and then I did all the upgrades.

Still can't read a DVD that burned in this computer when I am in 10.6.4. Another Sunday afternoon shot...

I must have a conflict with something else on this machine. Is there an easy way to create of log of installed software by date? Even after installing 10.6??

Thanks

Jul 18, 2010 11:01 AM in response to snsok

I have answered my question now. It turned out to be a software problem.

I have a Lexar Jump Drive that comes with an encryption program called SecureII.app. It allows a secure "vault" to be created on the USB thumb drive that can be encrypted and read on either a Mac or a PC. I had to remove a file in System>Library>Extensions called LexarFileScheme.kext and now I can read DVDs and my TrueCrypt program will recognize a file that it has encrypted.

The error on Disk Utility for the DVD that couldn't be read was:

*+invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block:66671c+*

When I googled that, I found references to the Lexar program and DVD problems.

Message was edited by: snsok

Sep 5, 2010 7:35 AM in response to snsok

Thank you so much for posting this. I've been crawling the inTARwebs for the last few days to resolve a related problem. I could not open most dmg files. I got the "no mountable filesystems" message when opening the file, and disk utility kept reporting "invalid BS_jmpBoot in boot block:66671c" when trying to repair a dmg that I could open on another Mac just like mine (same hardware, OS level, etc.). I kept thinking I had screwed things up with TrueCrypt until I read this thread. I deleted the kext you mentioned, restarted, and my problems have gone away. Now I wonder how I am supposed to encrypt files on my memory key. Guess I'll just use TrueCrypt and see how that works.

No, no! Bad Lexar! Bad!

DVDs now mostly unreadable under OS X 10.6.4 but it's not hardware

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