trouble with a recalcitrant CDDVDW drive

Greetings;

To start, my computer is getting a bit long in the tooth at nearly three years old. I have a TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-S223B ATA drive, and I was doing some physical archiving of my hard drive when I started to encounter problems with burning a disc.

The drive won't acknowledge any disc. I've tried a few data discs that I know are fine, but when asked to show me the contents of D: the tray ejects and shows a message "please insert a disc into drive d:."

Testing with a media disc: a DVD of Firefly. a little beep emerges from my computer, and another little beep, but no popup asking me what I want to do with the disc. I have AutoPlay set to start Windows media Player when I insert a DVD video disc. when I ask Windows Explorer to show me the contents of D: the tray ejects and shows a message "please insert a disc into drive d:."

I have vista home on this machine. My next step was to attempt to boot from CD. That worked, it booted up and wanted to install Vista, so i restarted and tried a media disc again. Another short, faint beep and another, about 15 second apart, maybe? And still not reading the media disc. I know that computers emit beeps in a pattern to indicate hardware trouble and if you know the code you can diagnose the problem, which is why I mentioned it.

What's the next step? I'm thinking "uninstall the drive from the control panel, reboot, and let Windows reinstall and see if that solves the problem," but I'm not holding out much hope for that. I probably need to replace the drive, and that's where my real worry lies.

I'm worried about buying a replacement because I don't know if a replacement even exists any more. When I look at my local computer shop, all the drives are SATA. I don't think I can use a SATA DVD drive. I'm not a hardware repair person. my motherboard is a Gigabyte EP43-UD3L running an Inter Core 2 Quad Q8400--oh you know what just look here why am I typing this, you'd think it was 1987 or something

I don't mind buying a replacement online and having it shipped if that's what it takes. I'm simply not at all up to date on hardware. Software problems I can bash through all right - if all else fails, format and re-install. Playing with little screwdrivers around electronics intimidates me. I'll probably have a friend come and do the physical installation and bribe her with promises of home cooking.

also with that hardware profile, is there a video card upgrade possible? maybe not the latest fashion or whatever, but maybe a bit of an improvement? I play games sometimes. the Ram is expanded to the maximum. Can I squeeze another year out of this computer before I have to replace it?

 

Hi,

I, personally, don't have a lot of patience with DVDROMs. I find that new ones will read any disc for a couple of years. Worth replacing for about $25.00 online to end the frustration of a picky drive. Online is definitely the way to go as retail stores usually only have one model and charge about twice as much. (If your local computer shop has reasonably priced replacements that is fine too. I only have big box stores and Radio Shack that don't stock that type of item.)

Looking at that model number, I come up with it being a SATA drive. You could take a quick peek at the cables connected to it to verify it is SATA (IDE is on top and SATA on bottom of picture). If it is SATA then any non-slimline (slimline models are desinged for laptops) SATA DVD burner would be your best choice for a replacement drive. I buy LiteOn out of habit but others have brands they prefer. (IDE drives are still readily available, if it is IDE, although less selection but about same price).



That said, I don't think it is a driver problem since it reads CDs, so Windows sees the drive and can use it when the drive itself can read the disc. DVD drives have two lasers, one for CD and one for DVD--it is possible your DVD laser is going bad or misaligned.

Are you using a different brand of blank media? Sometimes certain burners won't like particular media. Have you been burning discs for a while now-will it read a DVD that you burned several months ago? If it doesn't read an old disc I would just replace it and enjoy a trouble-free drive for a couple of years.

I hope others will help with the graphics card.

 

With DVD you can try blowing the lens clean with compressed air or canned air,just open the tray and blast the inside of the drive. I agree with sach though they work for a while but once they stop reading its times for a new one,its not so much the reading that bothers me its bad burned disks.

Your computer isn't too bad,socket 775 is still used and its quad core,you have 8gigs of ram and a PCI-E X16 slot so you can put pretty much any video card you please in there.

If you choose to upgrade your video card post the information on the side of your power supply 'you will have to take the side of your case off' and post how much you want to spend and what games you want to play.

If you don't want to get your screwdriver out and change your power supply your video card options will most likely be limited but that depends on the wattage,if its dell,gateway,hp post the model number.

Recalcitrant:-D

 

Because it can boot from a CD but appears not to be able to do anything with a DVD, I think the DVD laser is gone.

If you don't feel like opening up the case and installing another internal optical drive, I'd suggest looking at portable external DVD drives. The disadvantage is most of these have a Y-type USB cable and require two USB ports to supply enough power. If you do not have two USB ports close together and free then an external is not for you. The advantage is that the external drive can be used on any computer.

I bought one because my two netbooks do not have an optical drive so mine gets used hard. My husband's computer (an old, cheap, freebie) only has a CD-ROM drive so I can hook this up to his all-in-one computer.
I bought a LiteOn, similar to this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106356
when it was on sale for $30 and also offered a rebate.

 

try checking for upper/lower filters in the registry. While working for Dell, I ran into this issue a bunch of times. if you're running windows XP click [start], [run] and then type "regedit". this will take you to the registry. click on the drop down next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE then click the dropdown next to CurrentControlSet then click the dropdown next to Control, then click the dropdown next to Class this will produce a long line of strings. find the string: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} this string is for your DVD/CD-ROM drive. If you click on that string, it should populate the right side of the string. look for any UpperFilters and/or LowerFilters......delete them. then reboot your system. check to see if drive will then play discs. hope this helps.