Thinkpads Forum

Hi

My Thinkpad R40 doesnt seem to recognize the Ultrabay CD/DVD device sometimes. The problem started when I upgraded some software from the Lenovo website some time ago, but seems to persist even though I reinstalled the operating system.

The problem is quite random - and removing the drive and reinserting it does not seem to work every time. Also, if I put in a disc the drive makes noises and seems to be spinning the disc, but I cant read it. And sometimes if I put the computer on Standby or Hibernation, when it wakes up it no longer detects the drive. All this makes me think it is a software rather than a hardware problem.

I was wondering if anyone had experienced this before and/or has a solution to this problem

regards

Ramesh

Hi

I should add that now I have noticed that there seems to be some problem with `atapi' - I get a timeout error, followed by a PlugPlay Manager error.

The weird thing is that sometimes the CD-DVD `vanishes' without a reason - the hard drive seems to be spinning and suddenly the DVD drive is gone.

Ramesh

My R32 also has this problem, it's been happening for a while. I'm certain it's a hardware problem because Windows XP and two linux distributions don't see the drive.

A post on a newsgroup (can't find it now) suggested moving the pins on the cd drive further out from the centre of the connector: the top row moves up and the bottom row moves down, if you know what I mean!

I tried this and although it helped for a while it still doesn't work that well. Even just a small bump can stop the cd drive and cause it to vanish for several weeks even.

So that I have a working cd drive, I have acquired an IBM portable drive bay which plugs into the pcmcia slot. The only problem with this is it's speed (can't watch dvd on it) and it's not bootable, something I really need.

I hope you manage to get it sorted out.
/Martin

EDIT: ok, it wasn't a newsgroup, it was this forum. See this post, seems like a recurring problem.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15675