dvd drive isn't working in laptop
Hey everybody, I bought a laptop a few months ago and finally put a dvd into the drive and the drive spins up and I can hear the lens moving like its searching for something to read. I had a friend look at it, he loves messing with computers, but he's no expert(his words not mine, but he knows what he can and can't do). So far, he's upated, uninstalled. and reinstalled the driver, and looked for an alternate driver for it with piss poor results. Now, I have no clue what to do next. Anybody have some advice? The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite.
Thanks
Borbski
Try booting from the drive to rule out OS related problems.
If that doesn't work, try re-seating the drive. There should be 1 screw on the bottom of the laptop that secures the DVD drive in place. Unscrew that and slide the drive out out of the laptop body. Clear any dust from the connector with canned air and slide the drive back into the laptop.
Test again and post results.
Try a factory made music CD.
Try a regular CD ROM with a program on it.
Try a regular CD R/W with some information burned on another computer on it.
DVDs have all kinds of different "versions" that may cause a new DVD to not read in an older DVD player. (You can fix that with a flash update, but try other options first.)
Does the DVD you tried run in a DVD player?
Is it blank? Or is it burned?
Did you read the fine print on the drive and the DVD? There's R/W -1 +1 and about four other types of DVD. You may just have the wrong type for your drive.
Originally Posted By Gosu:
Try booting from the drive to rule out OS related problems.
If that doesn't work, try re-seating the drive. There should be 1 screw on the bottom of the laptop that secures the DVD drive in place. Unscrew that and slide the drive out out of the laptop body. Clear any dust from the connector with canned air and slide the drive back into the laptop.
Tried re-seating the drive, no luck. The laptop didn't come with a windows disk so I think I'm out of luck there.
Thanks for the help, I might try calling Toshiba today to see if they will/can help.
The disks that I've tried are music disks and DVDs. All factory burned, not homemade copies and they work in other equipment.
What OS? XP, Vista, or 7?
XP & Vista had a problem with some software resetting the upper & lower limits - registry fix needed to adjust those options.
I've seen that cure the problem.
Good luck.
Originally Posted By borbski:
Originally Posted By Gosu:
Try booting from the drive to rule out OS related problems.
If that doesn't work, try re-seating the drive. There should be 1 screw on the bottom of the laptop that secures the DVD drive in place. Unscrew that and slide the drive out out of the laptop body. Clear any dust from the connector with canned air and slide the drive back into the laptop.
Tried re-seating the drive, no luck. The laptop didn't come with a windows disk so I think I'm out of luck there.
Thanks for the help, I might try calling Toshiba today to see if they will/can help.
The disks that I've tried are music disks and DVDs. All factory burned, not homemade copies and they work in other equipment.
The last thing you can check is see if there is any gunk on the lense. Q-tip and alcohol should be able to clear it if blowing wont.
Otherwise, yeah, you are probably looking at a dead drive and a call to the manufacturer or eBay for a replacement drive is in order.
I called Toshiba and the guy I talked to(who sounded like he knew as much as I did about computers) said to send it in to them to look at it.
The OS is windows 7. My buddy that looked at it cleaned the lens so I'm thinking the drive is probably dead.
Originally Posted By Mak_380:
What OS? XP, Vista, or 7?
XP & Vista had a problem with some software resetting the upper & lower limits - registry fix needed to adjust those options.
I've seen that cure the problem.
Good luck.
that is if the drive isn't seen in my computer or other programs.
that fix works 25% of the time
Yep, it's dead. When I bring up my computer it shows a D: drive...... it just won't show what's in the drive
