Inspiron 530 DVD drive does not open or function

Question

I have a Inspiron 530 that I purchased in July 2007. The dvd drive stopped working with no warning. I have a TSSTcorp DVD+RW TW-H653A and would like to know what you might think is wrong, how I can fix it and if it cannot be fixed, what do I replace it with?

Here is the problem:

When I press the exterior button to open the door, the button does not respond.
- The green light is lit inside the door.
I used a paper clip in the emergency trigger and the DVD tray budged slightly without any spring motion, allowing me to pry the door open with the paper clip.
I pulled the tray out manually (it was very stiff), placed a music CD in the tray and forced the tray back into the machine.
I tried to play, open and explore the CD via My Computer>CD Drive>Open, but it only told me to insert a disc.
- it did not react when I chose open or explore
I also chose "eject" in the CD Drive menu and the drive did not even make a sound or effort to eject.
There are no sounds indicating that the drive gears engage when commanded or when I force the tray in and out.
There is no whirring or physical movement of the disc in the closed tray.

After reading knowledge bases articles, the Dell forums and using Microsoft's Fixit program here is what I can report:

My Windows XP system acknowledges the drive and shows it as 'enabled'.
My computer's diagnostics show "This device is running properly"
Microsoft's Fixit program shows that the device has a problem, but did not say what the problem was.
My Device Manager shows the device as present and operational.
All drivers and updates are current
No error messages or references appear when trying to access the DVD drive.

I've done everything I can think of. Is there something I have not tried?

Thank you for any suggestions you might have.

_____________________________

Dell Inspiron 530

Windows XP home edition v 5.1.2600

Genuine Intel(R) CPU 2140 @ 1.60GHz

RAM 2048 MB

osprey4 · Accepted Answer

Hi Meccatx,

The symptoms you describe point to a dead drive. When you say you ran the diagnostics, do you mean the Dell diagnostics (F12)? Does the drive open and close properly in the diagnostics utility? Did you perform a read test with a disc in the drive?

osprey4 · Accepted Answer

Ok, so you're not seeing the whole screen in DOS mode. Here's how to fix that. Boot up and tap F2 at the blue Dell logo, which will put you into the BIOS. Now you can fiddle with your monitor settings until you see the entire screen. This should NOT affect how the monitor looks after you boot Windows.

Now exit the BIOS and tap F12 and you should see an option for the utility partition, from which you can run the diagnostics.

meccatx · Answer

Thank you for replying, Osprey. When running the diagnostic in F12, I found this information. Granted, the information was against the left side of the screen and letters are missing with just a portion of one letter showing before each line, so I'm typing exactly what I saw:

ot from CD:

l boot device available, Press ENTER key to retry

l TA-0: Installed

l TA-1: Installed

l TA-4: None

l TA-5: None

I'm guessing this probably makes sense to you. When I pressed ENTER key, it didn't do anything but keep presenting this report. (I could not escape from this screen and had to shut down the tower manually in order to reboot.)

You asked if I had performed a read test with a disc in the drive. I'm not familiar with this.

I am about to step out for the day, but will check this thread this afternoon.

Thank you.

meccatx · Answer

Thank you for your help, Osprey. I believe your initial diagnosis is probably accurate now that I've viewed the results of the diagnostics in the utility partition. The seek test, read test, etc. for the DVD Drive all failed. They stated that the CD inserted did not contain data tracks and that I needed to insert an installation disc (which is what was in the drive to begin with). The Media Eject Test stated "media not present". I received an error message for that test: "0F00:1B1A IDE device failed. Device is not ready (media removal prevented."

I will begin a new thread to ask for referrals for replacement drives.

Storage, Drives & Media

Inspiron 530 DVD drive does not open or function

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