R40e DVD/CDRW optical drive problems

[kajencik]

Hello there,

after I solved the standby issues on my r40 which is the primary computer for me, it came the time to take a look at the r40e, I can't order an internal wifi antena yet (I placed a minipci and it's working but it has no internal wifi antena prepaired), still waiting for proper credit card, but, there is another issue:

The DVD/CRDW drive of the R40e is badly reading DVDs (CDs are fine), I yesterday bought a cleaning CD, but it helped only a bit, there are two issues:

1) The drive often dont recognize that the DVD is inserted for a firs time, the disc spins a bit, but than stops and windows is showing as there is nothing inside, the disc has to be removed and after some retries it usually loads up, but there are also some discs which dont load at all (I'm trying this with several original DVD films)

2) bandwith problems? - When the drive recognizes the media and I play the movie, it is stopping for little moments, as in a computer game when the computer is too slow for the game, but other videos plays well, so I think the drive couldn't feed the data fast enough

So, I will be really glad if you could give me some advices what to do, there are some posibilities:

1) fix the drive - but how? could it be a software / firmware issue? - but the drive has the same problem with recongizing media at bootup

2) replace the drive - I would have to diassembly the laptop, as there is no ultrabay in the r40e, and, could I use a optical drive from other notebook than IBM by modifing it somehow? And its hard to replace the optical drive in r40e by myself?

[ryengineer]

Make sure DMA mode is enabled:

Trouble Playing DVD's.

[kajencik]

Thanks a lot, it WAS the DMA problem, it's now gone, even it seems that it's recognizing the media better