Cd/DVD drive not working

Have you looked in the Device Manager to see if the drive has an error code?

The cd/dvd drivev is not listed in the device manager.

I have the same problem. 

If this is a SONY DVD+-RW Q58A drive, I have the same problem!   Showed up yesterday.  last used the drive sometime last week.   Have looked all over Dell web site, wasting several hours.

have repeatedly 'uninstalled' the drive in device manager, upon reboot, it always re-installs, with error message.  Found a forum suggestion for deleting secondary IDE channel; tried that, same  result.

Mike

If you have an error code in the Device Manager, you probably have and upper and lower filter problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

If the drive is not showing up in the Device Manager, then is there power to the drive, i.e., do any lights light up or does it make a sound?

If no power, turn off computer, remove drive and re-insert to make sure it has a good connection. If it still has no power, you probably have a bad drive.

The drive does have power, the lights do light up and it does make sound still.

Did you try the link that I posted above?

This info will help most CD/DVD drive problems.

I recently was given a dell latitude d820

I have the same problem the dvd only plays cd's but nothing else

my friend has 2 stepsons and he was given it to fix but could not manage it, I simply installed vista and it was fine in fact it is working really well

any ideas as to how to fix it or even what the problem might be, I have tried downloadign the latest drivers to no avail

the only solution I am thinking is to get an external dvd which simply plugs into the usb port and use that instead of the  main driver, at only 40 quid and considering the computer cost me nothing it is inexpensive

Hi TheChessPlayer,

This sort of problem is nearly always a laser/lens failure. There's nothing you can do to fix it. If you require the ability to read DVDs, you can either purchase an external drive, or replace the internal one. This side of the pond, a replacement will run $40-50.

thank you for that input, yes I had come to the saem conclusion and since I have 2 other laptops will prob go for the external one to use on the other 2 computers, I really only took it on as a project just to see if I could get it going, anyway, upon further investigation it does play cd and will even let me view pictures on a cd. but just wont have dvd's which leads me to think its a driver problem, I mean if it was the lens and I am not agreeing or disagreeing with you, then surely it would not read data of a cd Either ???

on another note but envolving the same computer I acquired some genuine dell driver software of a mate who used to have a dell computer and tried in install them and it said that it does not recognise the laptop as being a dell one, is that because i now have vista on it which I got from the original backup I made on an advent computer, to all software is this now an advent computer and not a dell ????

No, definitely the hardware. Trust me.

As far as drivers go, you can go to support above, then downloads and find all of the drivers for that system. You can search either by model number or service tag. Dell will only provide drivers for supported operating systems, but usually the Vista driver will work with Windows 7.

If you used a non-Dell OS disc to install the operating system, it may not read the Windows key as being a Dell, but I don't think it matters for downloads.

my main laptop is a Hewlett Packard, 320 gig hard drive ( I have a 500 gig external ), 4 gig DDR III ram, p6100 processor and I really love it ( HP G72 B01 sa )

Oh I do and kinda figured it was that, anyway like I said I am running an experiment on it, as I said earlier I put vista on it from my advent computer and am waiting to see what happens after the validation period expires, since I have 2 other laptops ( 3 in total ) I am not keen to spend money on it, I want to see if it will still operating normally despite having an out of date key, and I would rather fix up the hardware on my advent computer, it is a much better one, duel core etc where the dell one is single core and so much slower when you try and multi task, which is to be expected.