roadsweeper

I have a Dell Inspiron 5000e with a rather selective DVD drive. Its an LG DVD-ROM DRN8080B. The main problem being it will only read certain discs. I replaced the motherboard recently, but the drive was working fine for a month or so afterwards. It reads manufactured data DVD's ie. games etc.... but will not read video dvd's, data dvd's (made by me), or any type of CD, be it manufactured or home written.

Any ideas on whats caused this? I am running XP Pro SP2. Ive been into device manager, according to that, its working perfectly, tried using the lens cleaner, made no difference, tried taking the drive out and plugging it in again, and uninstalling it and letting the laptop reinstall it, made no difference.

Is it knackered?

Its set to region 2, but I wouldnt have thought that would have made any difference.

I am not running any virtual dvd emulation programs either.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated, its annoying having a defunct drive, and I cant find any replacement drives for the 5000 either, they are all for the later models ie 8000 etc....

Thanks,

TheMatt

Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling the driver manually? Does it read CDs before it boots into Windows? You could also try driver cleaner.

This may seem like a longshot, but could you somehow plug your hard disk into the CD/DVD ATA port? Perhaps its the port, if you could find a laptop ribbon cable (the 44 pin cable), try that.

laboye

If it is not the problem stated above, I suggest first relieving any software issues. If you are in America, set your drive back to Region 1. The firmware limits you to a certain number of region changes, so avoid changing this repetitively.

To change:

Right-click on My Computer and click properties. select the hardware tab and select Device Manager. Expand "DVD/CD-ROM Drives", right click your drive and click properties. Click the "DVD Region" tab and select United States and click OK. Verify and changes and close the opened windows.

That might solve DVD Videos, but as far as the CD issue goes, I'm stumped.

Impact Computers has a replacement available here:
They have CD-ROM, CD-RW, and DVD-ROMs available.

http://www.impactcomputers.com/dellp...s-storage.html

roadsweeper

had the port tested, its working fine, I guess the drives gone kaput.... Thanks for link Laboye, but those prices are a bit steep, I'll look elsewhere, it seems the 8080B is used in a wide range of models, I'm sure I can find one somewhere

laboye

DVD burners are quite expensive anyway. Slimline CD-ROMs are expensive because of the technology put into making them so slim, let alone having a slim DVD-Burner. Impact will be the cheapest aside from a good eBay buy...