Very old DVD drivers may have a problem with "modern" DVD disks, since there was a change in the Disk format specification somewhere back at about year 2001 or 2002 that changed the amount of "swing range" the heads needed. Pioneer - my original OEM DVD - warned that using "new spec" disks without their update could damage the drive. (I doubt it, but that's their opinion.) The warning was ambiguous, and may have applied only to burners. Their driver update didn't help with the problems I had with their drive so I trashed the drive and blew $50 US (assuming the rebate comes back) and got one that works.

I did find that Pioneer has a couple of "possibly useful" test utilities, although you have to wade through a lot of crap to find them. At Pioneer Support you should see a line that says:

 : "You can find out which firmware version you currently have by using this utility."

If you click, it should pop up the standard "Do you want to run or save," and if you save it to disk you should have:

183982208DeviceInfo.exe, 236 KB

It's intended to be for Pioneer drives only, but identified ALL of the fixed media and optical drives on my machine (including the internal and external Hard Drives, and CD/DVD drives), and gave some info about what each drive was and what firmware each was using. It will run from a DOS/Command window on my machine, and pops up the OS identification, and a button you click for "Display SCSI/IDE device info:."

For my new DVD burner, I get a typical:

E:    Device Type: DVD/CD-Rom
     Vendor ID: MAD DOG
     Product ID: MD-16XDVD9A2   
     Product Rev: 1.F0
     Vendor Info: 04121600

The Product ID is the model number (usually), and the Product Rev is the "firmware version" (usually). It definitely helps to know this information if you need to look for an update. (In particular, with a "salvaged" drive, someone may have downloaded a new firmware set that doesn't show up on the nameplate.)

Pioneer seems to make a habit of offering the same utility with slightly different names depending on which page you get it from. They probably have a 'NIX version, but I don't have a link to one.

John