Optical Drive acting weirdly

freakleo287 · 16-03-2009, 08:30 PM

Hi
I have an HCL laptop with the following config
Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 @ 1.66 GHz
2 GB DDR2 RAM
160 GB HDD
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530B
Running Windows XP Pro SP3.
I am using this for 4 months now and it was giving me no problems. However, these days my CD/DVD drive has been acting weirdly. Whenever I put in a cd and/or dvd in it, the system freezes when I try to open explorer. It can only be solved by ejecting the media. Sometimes the system doesnt freeze, but I see a blank cd/dvd whose properties show 0 bytes free and 0 bytes used, having RAW type filesystem. These symptoms occur out of the blue and with no apparent connection with the status of the system. Sometimes there are no problems with the media. The laptop did not come shipped with seperate drivers for the dvd drive, and so I am using the windows default drivers for it. I tried updating the drivers from device manager but it says that the appropriate drivers are already installed. I also checked if the problem arises with old cd/dvds, but it arises with new ones too.
Please help.

Regards

The Sorcerer · 17-03-2009, 12:43 AM

Windows xp sp3 has certain conflicts with pio/dma settings. On the device manager, under advance options of all IDE/atapi controllers change to DMA if you are using an sata dvd writer- or else PIO for IDE dvd drive. If this doesnt work, do the same on the system bios.

freakleo287 · 22-03-2009, 11:55 AM

yes tried that too but the setting was already set to DMA....

The Sorcerer · 22-03-2009, 12:46 PM

Hmm not sure what kind of connection does this use but did you try using the PIO instead of DMA as well. It might help but then again it might not. Certain updates from microsoft's end has created issues with normal working of IDE devices- mainly dvd drives.

Disc_Junkie · 22-03-2009, 01:59 PM

May be the lens of your DVD drive needs to cleaned. Get a lens cleaner CD and clean it. The same problem happens to me also but as I have cleaned it, it works fine now.