My CD/DVD drive stopped working today

[Purcy]

I used it all last weekend, for both music CDs and DVDs, now today it does not show up on My Computer as a drive, even though the little green icon is lit near the top right hinge. When I go into Device Manager it says that Windows cannot load the driver for the drive, as it may be corrupt or missing. I tried to uninstall the driver and then put it back in through Add New Hardware. It installs the driver but says that it ran into an error and stops. I'm wondering if I uninstall the driver, can I go onto the Lenovo site and download a fresh driver for this? I was just on there and all I can find are firmware updates for the drive itself. Thanks for any help. My drive is an Hitachi GD-S200 CD/DVD

[tfflivemb2]

Try removing the drive from the Thinkpad, then reboot with NOTHING in the slot. Then turn the Thinkpad off, reinsert the drive, then restart the system and see if it recognizes it.

[Ken Fox]

I used it all last weekend, for both music CDs and DVDs, now today it does not show up on My Computer as a drive, even though the little green icon is light near the top right hinge. When I go into Device Manager it says that Windows cannot load the driver for the drive, as it may be corrupt or missing. I tried to uninstall the driver and then put it back in through Add New Hardware. It installs the driver but says that it ran into an error and stops. I'm wondering if I uninstall the driver, can I go onto the Lenovo site and download a fresh driver for this? I was just on there and all I can find are firmware updates for the drive itself. Thanks for any help. My drive is an Hitachi GD-S200 CD/DVD

Given the probable age of your system, it could also be that your drive has just died. None of this hardware lasts forever so after a number of reasonable attempts to reload drivers, etc., you may have to deal with the reality of having a dead piece of hardware.

[Purcy]

Thank you both. I will try the empty reboot solution first; but yes I am sort of thinking it just died. This may be the perfect time to get that CDRW/DVD that I have been wanting for a while.

[schen]

If you know anyone with a ThinkPad with a UB2K bay, you might take it over and have them test it out to confirm that it's the drive. It's the packrat in my talking!

[Purcy]

Thanks Schen, I did swap my floppy drive into the ultrabay and that loaded and worked fine, Windows showing it on My Computer. I swapped it back to the CD/DVD and My Computer does not show it and when I put a CD in the drawer, I get this low whinny whir and then it dies. I already bought a CDRW/DVD drive (IBM) on e-bay last night. It's the IV drive that is the 24x write speed ($36).

[schen]

I'm glad you got it resolved. I do have a suggestion for you though. You might want to consider keeping the old drive around and keep an eye out for an inexpensive DVD burner and use the caddy from you dead drive to make it work. I saw a thread on this forum on a company that had a refurbed DVD burner for $29! I was able to get on and buy it then put my old caddy on it. It's been great!

On the other hand, if you're not a packrat like me and looking to get rid of it, let me know. I could always use a spare caddy.

[Purcy]

Excellent idea, I shall do that! I didn't have the time to wait for a multi burner to show up on Ebay, as I do use a CD drive a lot. But it would be nice to have the DVD burner someday too.

Thanks!