DVD driver dropped by Vista?

My Samsung CD/DVD drive (TSST corp CDDVDW SH-S203N ATA) is not working in Vista Ultimate 32 bit. I put a CD or dvd in the drive and it fires up like it is reading the disc but it does not.

I click on the drive icon to open the drive and it prompts me to “Prepare this blank disc”. The properties of the drive says the free space on the disc is equal to the size of the files on the disc not the actual size of the disc which is 700 MB. It does this with data discs, Windows install discs, music discs, cds, dvds, etc.

Device manager shows this drive as working with a Microsoft driver ver. 6.0 which is the latest available according to the update agent. I can reinstall the device and restart the computer and it works fine however the problem returns upon the next restart.

When I boot into XP installed on my second drive this device works flawlessly. I have installed the latest firmware 20080123115019703_SH-S203N_SB01 from Samsung but things have not changed.

I have uninstalled Nero 7 and do not currently have any burning software installed. I have also removed the drive from the machine and then replaced.

Thank for your help.

System; ABIT IP 35 pro, Intel C2D E6750, Mushkin 580w PSU, EVGA 8600 GT, 2x2gb G Skill dual channel, Samsung DVD Burner SATA, 2x Seagate 250 GB HDD SATA

 

Might this be a hardware problem?

I can right click on the drive and scan the contents with AVG and I can copy and paste the drive to the desktop and open the folder to view the contents but cannot explore the CD/DVD drive. I still get prompted to 'Prepare this blank disk'.

I just received a POST code from the motherboards LED display. It stopped at 75 which is 'Detect & install all IDE devices: HDD, LS120, ZIP, CDROM...'

Any advice? This build is only 2.5 mos. old.

BTW they are all SATA drives.

 

My Sager notebook has a Pioneer disk drive and it messes up all the time. Some times I put in a movie and it works sometimes it don't! I just go into the hardware and disable it and then enable it, that works most of the time. I am running Vista Ultimate 64bit.

 

Hi Scout,

Thanks for the suggestion it works but is an annoyance.

A crackling and snapping noise has started to come from the tower about every 10-15 minutes and a faint beep from the motherboard occasionally. I'm pulling out the drive and monitor things for a while.

Thanks.

 

Looks like a motherboard issue?

I removed the CD/DVD drive, booted up and the bios only recognizes one of the two SATA HDD. In short only a few of the SATA connectors work and only # 3 & 4 with both HDDs connected.
I think I'll head to the Abit support forums.

Would still appreciate any helpful comments.