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Windows or Dell not recognizing the drive
I have a Dell Latitude D520 laptop, about a year and a half old. It has Windows XP and the CD/DVD drive is: Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-5560A
I had this problem a few months ago and spoke to Dell support many times on the phone. I'd rather not go through all that again if possible. It just takes up too much time.
I mostly used the drive, in the past, to watch DVD's. When I went to use it for something else (I forget what now, I think I was trying to burn DVD's), suddenly it is not working for anything. It will not play, rip, or burn CD's or DVD's; it will not see data disks, music disks, or DVD's. Windows sees the drive and says it's working, but it will not see any disks in it or anything on the disk.
The first Dell support person said it must be software, so she sent me new Roxio software, but that did not help. Not only does Roxio say there is no disk in the drive, iTunes, Windows Explorer and other software also do not see any disk (and of course I have tried many different disks).
The second support person said it must be hardware, so they sent me a new drive, and I swapped it out. That did not solve the problem.
The third person tried many different software things, including reinstalling/updating the driver, uninstalling the drive itself, system restore, nothing helped. They finally said the only thing that would fix it is to reinstall Windows. So I did that, and finally it was working.
This was earlier in 2008. Now I am having the same darn problem again and it's only been a few months. I was ripping some CD's and all of a sudden it just stopped working. The next disk I put in would not work, iTunes would not see it. Again, nothing else works, either, in this drive, no other software will view any kind of disk. Same darn problem.
I really would rather not reinstall Windows once again. It's a big pain in the you know what to have to do that, it takes hours, and then I it takes more time to have to reinstall all the programs I use, not to mention copying all my files to back them up etc. With no guarantee that the problem will not happen again.
I have had like, 6 Dells and never had this problem before.
Please help if you can!
Thanks,
Suzanne
osprey4
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January 18th, 2009 05:00
Suzanne:
Try the article in CD/DVD FAQ under "code 39 error". There are articles for both XP and Vista. Post back and let me know if that helped.
slanoue123
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January 18th, 2009 06:00
Thank you! It says: "After you remove a CD or DVD burning program from your computer, the CD drive or the DVD drive no longer appears in the My Computer window. You might also receive an error message when you try to access the drive."
My drive *does* appear in the My Computer window. It appears in Windows explorer just fine. It just won't recognize any disk in the drive. I did not receive any error message, either.
So how do I know if this is really it or not?
I thought it was not a good idea to edit your registry if you don't know what you're doing?
Thanks,
Suzanne
btwilson
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January 18th, 2009 07:00
I had a similar problem with my Dimension E310. The DVD burner worked originally but stopped working for dvds and cd roms but would still play music cds. I had to add a new dvd burner and the new drive works. Even though it works I still have a problem with the drive 1 (where the new drive is located) being recognized during boot up, so each time I boot up I have to press f1 to get beyond the setup page . Anyone know of a fix for this?
osprey4
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January 18th, 2009 13:00
Yes, I understand that. But this procedure fixes a variety of problems, such as what you're having trouble with.
Please follow the instructions carefully, including making a backup of your registry, and there is no risk.