Is my DVD/CD-RW drive busted ?

[MarcW]

Tried to use the DVD drive tonight and it won't recognize any DVDs or CDs. Drive was working fine just 2 days ago and nothing has changed with the laptop since. The drive makes some noise when I close the tray. I can hear it trying to spin up but then it spins back down. After that the green light flashes fast a few times and that's it. XP sees the drive just fine and says it's working properly. I'm wondering if this is a hardware problem. I tried both DVDs and CDs that were burned with this drive as well as some audio CDs (not burned ones) and an original pressed Win XP CD but nothing works.

I took the entire drive out and reinserted it but it didn't fix it. I'm not sure what to do at this point. If this is a hardware problem will I have to send in the entire laptop to IBM or is it good enough to send the drive only ?

Thanks,
-MarcW

[Leon]

Call them.... they will send you a drive.

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[FTC]

Hi,

Before that I would attempt two things :

1. Make sure you try the unit after a power down/reboot of the machine (not just a "restart" or an "hibernate/suspend"). This is because we want to give the hardware the opportunity to reinitialize completely.

2. Update with the latest firmware available in the IBM site... thinkpad drives are quite delicate and have had quite a bit of updates to recognize better media, etc... also test with different, known good media.

[MarcW]

Thanks. I did call them and they are sending a new drive out. Service rep was very helpful and courteous. This was the first time that I called IBM support and I have to say it was a suprisingly good experience. Far above the usual 'customer service' I'm getting from other places.

I did try just about everything before calling them. I did power down all the way and re-seated the drive but it didn't help it. The drive makes some clicking noise when it tries to spin up the CD which doesn't sound too good. I'm sure this is a hardware defect since the drive worked just fine a couple days ago and there were no changes to the laptop at all. The new drive will let me know for sure.

MarcW