CD DVD ROM doesn't work

Question

Working on a friends new Inspiron 531s, which came with Vista. Removed Vista and installed XP Pro without a hitch. A few exclamation points in device mgr were taken care of by installing the drivers. Installed Quickbooks and lots of other stuff from CD's and all was working well. Friend then allowed Dell to remotely control the machine for a time, presumably to assist with video card drivers, but they botched that, too. Now, the CD DVD ROM sits there like a stone. It shows up in explorer (D:), opens when double clicked, but shows nothing in the window, like there is not disc in it, but there is. Tried a couple of XP install discs, some audio discs, some driver discs - nothing. Won't autorun. Have looked for drivers at Dell using service tag, model number etc. Dell coughs up nothing for HL-DT-ST DVD +-RW GSA-H73N (LG, I think) even under the Vista OS. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the device, updated the drivers through device mgr to no avail.  I've also tried that thing MS suggests about deleting upper filter and lower filter registry entries - the entries do not exist. Please help. Dell won't help because we removed Vista. Many thanks!

osprey4 · Answer

Hi, noguy:

The drivers are generic to the OS so there's no use searching for those. The Dell diagnostics are OS-independent, so that would be the next logical step (and why the Dell techies didn't suggest that, I don't understand).

osprey4 · Answer

While I have the utmost respect for the Dell techies, I do not agree with their assessment that this is a drive conflict.

Would you please let me know exactly what happened when you ran the diagnostics and the exact error codes?

noguy · Answer

I'm afraid I can't give you a blow by blow because it was too long ago. I know I had trouble running the diagnostic utility, but when it finally ran, I got these error codes upon testing the drive:

0F00:137B Msg. DVDRW_1 - Drive media is missing or blank

I was unaware that I should have media in the drive, so I put in a disk and got:

0F00:2870 Msg. DVDRW_1 - Self test OPU failed

(I may have abreviated the word 'message')

Thanks for your help.

noguy

noguy · Answer

Hello,

I've run the dell diagnostics and given the generated error codes to Dell. Thier techs say the codes indicate a driver conflict. I agree. We can run DVD's in the drive, but not CD's. Thier suggestion was to back up everything and re-install XP. Since there's no working CD drive, I will try to use a flash drive to reinstall XP. But I don't understand where the drivers come from that allowed me to install XP from the CD drive in the first place, and where is they now? Can some one help me understand this? Thank you.

noguy

osprey4 · Answer

Your drive has indeed failed. Contact Dell and make sure you provide this failure code and they should replace the drive.

Let me add a note about the "driver conflict". The diagnostics do not run under Windows, so no drivers are running. If some Dell techie gives you a line about a "driver conflict", they don't know what the heck they're talking about and you need to ask to speak to someone else.

noguy · Answer

Yes, we've finally convinced Dell of that, and they agreed to send a new drive. My friend then commenced to tackling the video card issue with them, allowed 2 Dell techs to control the machine remotely, and now she has no computer at all. Well, the computer runs, but the display is black (on two mointors). That was the latest as of 3 AM Wed.

I am not impressed by Dell's techs.

Thank you again for your help.

N

osprey4 · Answer

I'm sure some of them are very good.   Take care,

Storage, Drives & Media

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