Advice on Vostro 1700 optical drive replacement.

At the risk of repeating myself for the umpteenth time, thanks John. This really is above and beyond the call of duty, even for a Colonel of the Interplanet Space Fleet!

I'll give these options a bash --starting with the least scary first!-- and let you know how I get on.

Lownes

 

Hello, me again!

I tried as you suggested: updated Vista, flashed the BIOS, and updated the chipset drivers, but all to no affect.

Updating the Intel Mobile Chipset was a rather haphazard process, The auto-extracting file from Dell presented me with an Update Program which (using switches) extracted the INF files particular to my Vista installation to a folder on the HD. From here, I seemed to have no choice but to manually check each likely entry in Device Manager against the new INF files to find any that could be updated. Most updates were to the various USB Host Controllers. None were for the IDE Channel or the Ultra ATA Storage Controller as I had hoped.

Did I do this right, or was there an obvious way of auto-updating the chipset that I missed? The readme file that accompanied the update was less than clear on this crucial, final stage in the process.

As it stands, I'm back to square one, albeit with a more up-to-date laptop and several possible fixes crossed off.

Any further advice, ideas, invocations or incantations will be gratefully received?

Thanks for your help,

Lownes

 

Did you run the Microsoft Diagnostic tool? It's very good at fixing software issues.

Also you may need an OS reinstall. Vista sleep/hibernation problems can't be repaired usually, you may need to reimage your computer.

 

Did you try using the driver update option within Device Manager and then pointing to the folder with the extracted files?

Also look in the system log (Computer Management > Event Viewer ) to see if any errors are reports during the resume process.

John

 

Thanks for getting back to me again with your advice.

Hi, Tsunade. I'm trying to avoid a reinstall if at all possible, especially for a problem which is more annoying than debilitating, although I'm willing to believe that it may well be the only solution to my particular problem. As regards the MS Diagnostic Tool you suggest, would this be the 'Debug Diagnostic Tool v1.1'? I tried their 'Fix-It Center' --more through hope than expectation-- but to no avail.

John, I updated those drivers I could by doing just as you've said. A specific IDE channel driver was not found when I pointed the updater to the folder of new drivers, although an update to the driver for 'Intel(R) ICH8M Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 2850' which 'handles' the IDE channel was found and applied. However, if I try to update the IDE channel in Device Manager by selecting the 'Have disk...' option and pointing at the folder of new drivers, it finds the following four available drivers (presumably from the ich8ide.inf and .cat files):

Intel(R) ICH8 4 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2820
Intel(R) ICH8 2 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2825
Intel(R) ICH8M 3 port Serial ATA Storage Controller - 2828
Intel(R) ICH8M Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 2850

Obviously, the last of these is the one I've already applied to the IDE channel controller. Should I also apply it to the IDE channel itself or is that asking for more trouble?

Of the warnings and errors reported by Event Viewer, only the following (Event ID 4) is reported in waking:

'Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller: The network link is down. Check to make sure the network cable is properly connected',

which I assume is just the Network Adapter being slow to wake (I can sympathize!), as there are no problems in that department.

There's another warning (Event ID 51) which seems to occur now and again when burning DVDs:

'An error was detected on device \Device\CdRom0 during a paging operation',

but I assume this is nothing major as burns are fine.

The only error reported is the following:

'The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
IFPUSB',

which I believe to be a hangover from a long defunct mp3 player.

The weird thing is that when I wake the laptop from sleep in the morning, the DVD drive will be 'stuck on' and unusable, but I can shut the laptop again and reopen a few minuted later and the drive will be fine and raring to go.

Again, any further thoughts and ideas would be much appreciated,

(I wonder if it's too late to ask Santa for help...?)

Lownes