CD/DVD rom Drives help

i have a sony vaio laptop PCG-FR315S

it has a dvd rewriter dual format, DW-U50A latest firmware. i am running Xp home sp2.

my original problem was that it stopped recognising dvds and some cds. I was looking at the vaio-link support and it was awful but said that i should try uninstalling all dvd/cd related software as it was not a hardware fault. i suspecte it was to do with Nero and so deleted this as well as region free. then when i tried to use win dvd it opened and said no drives found. in device manager all the optical drives, dvd writer, virtual drive, and a usb cd-r that i have borrowed to try and reinstall original drivers have an ! on them and in the properties it says:

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device.

i have tried uninstalling them and reintalling but it says it cant find driver..... and no change to situation. i cannot do a system recovery as i have no way of getting access to cds because even usb drives dont install.

if the solution involves a driver can someone please give me a download link as the cds i have cant be used due to no drives working

i have tried searching for drivers but with no luck.

cheers in advance.

Ed

 

the thing about cd/dvd drives are they don't require drivers in windows to run. the only thing short of replacing it that i can think of is trying it in DOS (try to read a dir on a cd).

i would contact your vendor about a possible RMA if you are within the RMA period.

 

i remembered over dinner that i had turned system restore backon this morning and amazingly it worked!!!!!!

which is great......but..... now i am back to the problem of the fact that my dvd drive as mentioned above will not read dvd's and interestingly will not let me change the dvd region even though i still have three user and 4 vendor changes left. the problem i am informed is a software problem and as i mentioned earlier i am thinking it could be nero.

i have version 6.3.1.25

anyone know of a possible solution without it messing my system up as happened earlier?

also i can't ring sony as it has just come out of warranty and they have started charging a basic fee of £12 for all out of warranty calls!!!