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Vostro 5890 optical drive issue
I've been trying to troubleshoot an issue with the optical drive in my (two-month-old) Vostro 5890, and I have a question: Should the drive be failing the BIOS diagnostic (in other words, the Diagnostics tab from the BIOS's One-time Boot Menu) if media is in the drive? (If the drive is empty, it passes; replacing the drive with a new one or moving it to another SATA port has no effect.) If you have a late-model system (10th generation Intel CPU), does yours fail similarly?
Thanks!
NJDave
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January 17th, 2022 12:00
Technical support responds that the pre-boot diag will fail if media is in the drive. The fact that nobody else seems to be experiencing the problem with hanging I/O makes me hopeful that some hardware replacement will solve it.
redxps630
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January 11th, 2022 12:00
I would not necessarily rely on the Dell diagnostic to verify the odd is actually good or bad. are you able to see the drive in Windows? does the drive automatically eject its tray when you click eject? does drive detect blank dvd disc and does it read data DVD correctly? those are actual function tests I would use to know whether it works or not. If it is not working, replacement is not expensive.
NJDave
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January 11th, 2022 13:00
The problem I'm having is a bit intermittent (only a bit) and Dell says they're not seeing it in the field: Writing to the drive, e.g. writing a disc image to it with ImgBurn or Power2Go [a Dell-sanctioned tool], hangs, and subsequently other functions hang, e.g. scanning devices with Device Manager, system shutdown). Replacing the drive with a new one has no effect, nor does moving the drive to another SATA port. USB-attached drives work great. Actually all functionality works great on Windows 10, and on vanilla Windows 11, but after Windows Update updates all the drivers etc. it starts failing. It's really difficult to choose which updates get applied in that first blast of Windows Update, so I don't know which update is the culprit.
Dell wants $99 to investigate further, and frankly I'm tired of working on it (I've already ordered a USB enclosure for the drive) but I do think it's weird that the drive fails diags, hence the question.
(Edit: The image appears to have been removed from the original post. the diag error is "Self test: DRAM test failed".)
NJDave
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January 21st, 2022 10:00
Just placing a note: The hanging I/O problem happens on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Since I've only experienced the problem using (multiple) third-party software, Dell support has deemed it not covered by the warranty. After two months troubleshooting this issue, plus more time working on other issues, I'm done and I'm calling the problem and the system a loss. Just too many weird problems and every one a battle. Owning a computer is not supposed to be so frustrating and stressful.