Hey gents, I'm baffled to say the least; I've never ever come across anything like this before.
Basically bought my Skyrim copy on release, and installed it completely fine with the disc.

Now about a year down the line i'm using the same disc, the same DVD drive and the same computer minus one GPU upgrade.
But It will not read the disc, I have put the disc in my mother's computer and it works fine in there.
I have read somewhere about things being dual layered and the such, but things like Max Payne 3 installs fine from disc.

I'm completely baffled.

If anyone knows anything please let me know.
Please don't suggest:

• DVD drive broken
  
• Disc unreadable
  
• DVD Region code
  
• Dual Layer disc.

Didn't you need to download Skyrim fom Steam after you put in the disc for the first time? And after that it is tied to your Steam account? I have no idea how this work seeing as i bought Skyrim in Steam itself.

Well I could download it, and yes it is tied to my steam account. But I've moved house recently so a more... Scenic location and the internet obviously isn't as fast. So it would take me a long while.

I belivie that is your only option, sorry.

It's more likely that your DVD device cannot read certain disc anymore. I suggest that you buy a new DVD device or test your DVD device in a different computer, but also check the cables for that DVD device.

I can't remember exactly, but AFAIK you don't need to download anything except for the Steam Client. Also when you activate Skyrim in Steam then it's tied to your account not before. Here is more http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1258133-installing-from-disc-instead-of-steam/.

...But I don't get how a DVD drive can suddenly 'decide' it doesn't want to read a certain disc.

I had this problem once too; it occured that my dvd player was broken. Bought a new one.

But this one appears completely fine.
I installed Xcom and Max Payne just last week.

Will it read other discs now? Because it sounds like it's a problem with the drive, especially since you said the disc works on another computer. Have you tried cleaning the drive with a cleaning kit?

Fortunately, if it is a bad DVD drive, it's an easy and cheap replacement - you can get a new drive for $30 or less.

Yep as I said I installed 2 much larger games earlier last week and I've put numerous games in to test it today and each and every one was read fine.
Which leads you to believe it's the disc right?
Wrong. The disc can be read by other computers.

So what gives?

Are you trying to (re)install? If not, you don't need the disk to play the game; simply click on the desktop icon and it will launch. If you prefer, you can set Steam to offline mode and then you won't need an internet connection to play.

The DVD player is broken somehow. It probably can't 'seek' to a certain area of disks.

Yeah I want to reinstall and play again for Dragonborn.
And Gossi have you got any proof or any literature I can read to back that up?
I want to be certain before I splash the cash for a new one.

Try swapping out the disc drive from the other computer and put it in the one that's not working and see if it works then.

At the very least, it will help determine if it's something with the system or not.

Nope. Try swapping player with your mums? I've had DVDs which read on some players but not others before (notably, some are bad at coping with dirty areas).

I probably will end up just swapping drives at this point.

Well I have personally experienced problems like this - the same DVD read on one computer and not read on another, while other DVDs get read without issues. A combination of DVD and DVD-drive time-degrading, I guess. Some drives are better to read degraded DVDs. For me, the solution was changing the drive.

EDIT: Including swithing the brand.

I had this issue a few months ago, not just with the Skyrim DVD, and it turns out it was the DVD drive and it needed to be replaced (Got a good 4 years out of it). The symptoms you are seeing with your DVD drive about match my own. Swapping drives is your best bet, or using an external DVD drive if you have one.

Some forms of DRM want to take over the DVD drive as well.... Starforce springs immediately to mind...