A new Thinkpad (T40) user - probs with DVDROM drive & Wi

[techydude]

Hello Everyone,

My name's Anthony, and I gotta say first, what a great site this appears to be! I've just spent the last week in aximsite.com (trying to get my Dell Axim X50 PDA working with WinMobile5), but although there's plenty of knowledgeable people there, how shall I say it, the low 'signal to noise' ratio really does my head in! Congratulations on what appears to be something quite different!

I bought this Thinkpad T40 (2373PM1) in February06, it'd been refurbished by IBM including a fantastic new 7.2AH battery (6+hours!).

In most respects it's running great, but I have a couple of significant problems with the WiFi dropping out, and the DVD-ROM drive - and TWO REPLACEMENTS - 'degrading' to the point of useless.

I've searched the forums and found several threads relating to miniPCI NICs and the "gotchas" when replacing with non-IBM-supplied alternatives, but haven't found detail specific to the T40, nor mention of my specific problem (but I'm unsure if the search engine ranks results according to the frequency of search terms found, and there's an awful lot of history in these forums!).

I'm more inclined to replace it regardless to get 802.11g speeds, so I'll post detail of my issue here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 766#157766
(http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=21449)

I'd really appreciate it if anyone with experience on that issue could take a quick look.

Secondly, my DVD-ROM drive. It's been replaced twice now (thanks to IBM's very impressive warranty program, although I only have a few months of that left!) but each one keeps 'degrading' to the point of not being able to read most DVD videos (or data DVDs too, but CDs are usually OK) after a month of modest use.

When a DVDvideo is inserted, it's usually identified OK initially, spins up & launches Intervideo WinDVD7 (full paid version). But that's where it starts to fail. Currently many if not most DVDs will not make it through the initial copyright warnings, or it might make it to the top menu and let me start to play the title for a few seconds - but then the drive slows right down and the heads zip back n forth continuously trying to re-sync to the disc, or it just stops (I think it's still spinning, but @ min speed). Sooner or later WinDVD will more often than not lock up, not even respond to Eject. Eject button ususally still works though.

Despite this looking like a purely hardware problem, I've uninstalled and reinstalled WinDVD7, and tried using Windows Media Player with a different dvd/mpeg2 codec, but more or less the same symptoms.

If it was just 1 drive that degraded to the point of failure like this, I'd think nothing of it. But this is the 3rd - the original that came with the refurbished T40 which was marginal to start with, then 2 warranty replacements with recent manufacture dates, degrading the same way.

The current drive is a Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc GDR-8083N. Unfortunately I didn't pay attention to the previous two.

I just know if I call IBM and tell them the 2nd replacement's gone south again, they will (and should) look into it in more detail than just replacing with another DVD drive, which may involve downtime I haven't been ready for until recently. But I thought I'd post here first in case it's a known issue.

I'm interested in replacing this drive with a DVDROM/CDRW unit, but not until I have some reassurance that this isn't caused by a fault in the T40 itself.

Many thanks for any input here,
Anthony - techydude

[underclocker]

Sounds crazy. You're on the right track, though, with trying a combo drive. Just ask IBM support for one. I received one recently when my DVD died and they said they only had the combos in stock, so I was "upgraded" for free.

Tell them you've tried three and would like to try that (or a multi-burner!)

Good luck.

[Harryc]

Anthony, did you ever find a fix for this drive not reading DVD-ROM's?

[frankiepankie]

Have you tried upgrading the firmware: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 41018.html

?

I did that on my T40 DVD drive, and suddenly i was able to read burned DVD+RW discs (was not possible before, the LED kept blinking, and i couldn't do anything with the disc)

The update is very easy (burn the disc, pop it into the drive you want to upgrade, hit a few buttons (you only have to accept that it is your own risk etc.)

And after 2 min or so, you can boot back into Windows (or Linux if you have that installed) and it is all fine

[Harryc]

Thanks for the advice. I upgraded the firmware on the drive yesterday. The problem is not reading burned DVD's. The problem is reading and playing commercially pressed DVD-ROM discs....e.g. movies.