DVD RW about to Bite the Dust

Dyre Straits · Jun 21, 2006, 02:07 PM

I think my DVD RW is about to go belly-up.

I've had a few instances where it shows up only as a CD-ROM drive in My Computer.

Also, there have been some situations where it wanted to act in reverse. That is, when I put in a DVD or CD, it will pop out the tray. Even rebooting would result in the tray being pushed out instead of in. When that happened, I removed the drive from Device Manager, rebooted and let Windows redetect it. It's been working 'somewhat' OK since then.

BUT, now, when I play OBLIVION, the system keeps wanting to access the DVD...which results in the game halting while it does this.

I've updated the firmware on it but, I think it's just on its last legs.

Judas · Jun 21, 2006, 03:32 PM

unscrew all the screws... unplug it... yank it out.. then shake it violently...

from there you decide if it's wise to put it back in and try a cd/dvd in it or not

actually, usually when the drive "appears" to be in reverse.. it usually caused by something kicking in the eject mode.. or something causing resistance ( as if the drive couldn't quite shut all the way or things were lineing up just quite right... a short even)...

I'd suggest removing it asap. You won't want it messing anything else up (Bad drives can screw up IDE controllers)

Dyre Straits · Jun 21, 2006, 06:48 PM

Yes, I followed through on my purchase of a brand new DVD RW today. They have them at MicroCenter for $36.99 + tax. They are OEMs with a installer CD. (Although, I still don't even know what's on the CD other than NERO.

)

This one is a 16X Dual Layer TSSTcorp SH-W162C. I've already updated the firmware to T-11 and did a nice full movie burn awhile ago.

I used Verbatim 16X DVD-R and it hovered between 7x-10x actual burning. After it reached 89% of the process it actually went over 15x.

I've also played about an hour of OBLIVION without any of those annoying accesses to the drive.

So, it's good so far.