I have a HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4247N ATA cd drive in my T43P

[rxr0906]

I have this drive (HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4247N ATA FRU P/N 39T2687) in my T43P it was recognized in the device manager intermittently and recently not at all.

Whenever it wasn't recognized I was able to remove it from the device manager, physically remove it from the laptop, reboot, put it back in, then it would get recognized by the device manager and would work for maybe a week or two then the same thing all over again.

I've been on WIN7 PRO on the laptop for about a year now and regularly update it. I'm not sure but it seems that since the last update that's when the procedure outlined above to get the drive recognized stop working.

I suspect that this is a WIN7 born problem so my next step is to put in another hard drive drive that has XP Pro on it to see if the CD drive gets recognized again without jumping through hoops.

Any ideas as to which direction to pursue to hopefully resolve the issue?

Will not be able to try the hard drive with XP on it for a week, so I thought I'd post this in the meantime.

IBM Thinkpad T43P-2687-D5U

[poshgeordie]

Welcome to the forums.

You can test the CD Drive by using an Ubuntu Desktop CD. This installs a Linux Ubuntu Desktop system without touching anything on your existing Hard Drive.

The following requires access to another PC:

The program downloads as a bootable .iso, and you have to then burn it as a bootable ISO. If you use Windows I suggest this one.

Also burn it veeerrrrryyyy slowly, like x5.

To boot from CD on your Thinkpad press F12 at the welcome screen. Sit back and if your CD device is working OK you'll end up with a fully working Ubuntu OS loaded into memory with your HDD untouched.