Southbridge or CD-DVD drive problem (or both)

[CeeBee]

T43-1871 with CD-RW/DVD (FRU p/n 13N6769) running W7 Pro with 2GB Memory.

I have had occasional CD drive disconnect issues for a good year, however, no big deal as the drive worked most of the time. Basically a pita I could live with.

Lately the CD drive disconnect-connect has increased to non-acceptable levels combined with error beeps (short 3-3-3-...) and once in a while a BSOD. Removing the CD drive appears to fix the issue. And the computer seems more agile w/o the CD drive, with, for example, faster and more responsive Firefox loading and browsing and faster resume from sleep.

Question: is this a pure CD drive issue or maybe related to a failing Southbridge or both? Replacing the CD drive seems to be the 1st step. However, I would like to get a more capable drive able to also write DVDs (13N6769 only reads DVDs). Any comments on the issue and/or on what drive I should look for?

What about DVD-ROM 92P6579 suggested by Lenovo:

https://support.lenovo.com/de/en/documents/migr-62332
http://www.overstock.com/Electronics/IB ... oduct.html

Thanks.

[ajkula66]

Given the age of the media drive in question, it may very well be on its way out. You can replace it with any T4x or T6x media drive, although the latter will not have the curved bezel but will work just fine. These are inexpensive enough nowadays to warrant a swap.

If the problem persists after the swap, we'll just have to dig deeper into the issue at hand.

Good luck.

[CeeBee]

I'll see if I can find a good T4x 92P6579 drive (read/write CD-DVD) with a curved bezel. Hoping for the best.

Edit: I should probably look for this drive instead of the above: Option P/N 73P3342, FRU P/N 39T2507, ASM P/N 39T2506

Thanks!

____________________________________________________
...The fate of all mankind I see Is in the hands of fools...

[CeeBee]

Thinking of it, I flashed the drive with a modded firmware (auto-removes region setting) some time ago and thus I would like to re-flash with the official fwod08.iso boot disk to be sure this is not the cause. Doing so, I'm told I have already the latest firmware and that no flash update will be done. As the modded firmware doesn't change the version this is not surprising.

Question: is there a way to force a re-flash using the fwod08.iso boot CD disk? Thanks.