Acer Aspire 5315 - CD/DVD Optical Dive just stopped working!

Hello
I am new to this forum and have some background in fixing my computer issues but this one has me stumped.
I was watching a DVD and the Optical drive just stopped. The blue Acer arcade screen said Acer is not responding. Very well, this has happened before, so I shut the program down and rebooted the computer and this time nothing. Where as before I could resume play at the point I left off. Acer arcade now comes back saying "Acer does not detect DVD/CD device" and prompts you with Yes or No to move forward.
I have looked into registry edit, deleting filters, bios settings and driver updates all to no avail. The funny thing it shows the Drive listed on "My Computer".
not as original "Optiarc CD-RW CRX880A ATA device" but simply "DVD/CD-RW drive (E ".
Furthermore, my Windows Media Player use to launch by default to play any DVD I inserted and that doesn't launch or work either? Any help or insight would be appreciated.

William

 

It could have just died- it happens more often to mobile drives than the normal half-height. Check if it's listed in BIOS.
If you have another notebook with the same connector ATA or SATA you van test it there- it doesn't requite you to disassemble it. There's just one screw available from the outside and then you simply pull the drive out.

It may be the connector, it may be Windows or it may be the drive itself.
If it refuses to boot from DVD it's not Windows- it's either connector or the drive. If it doesn't work in another notebook- it's a drive for sure.

 

Try a Linux disc. If it works, then it's a software issue. If it does not, the drive has probably failed.

 

This. It's usually what I do to troubleshoot things that don't work in Windows.

Although, like downloads said, it probably just died. Laptop components fail a lot faster than desktop components partly because they're being moved around all the time.

Oh and my optical drive failed on me too, but I've found that I really didn't use it much anyway.

 

Thanks for all the feed back,
I checked the bios and it shows "ATA ......" in the left column next to the drive name.... so I think that is correct?
I may have to make a boot CD/DVD to definitely rule out a software issue verses a drive failure. I don't have a second laptop to swap out with either.
Can a boot disc be made from downloading files off the the internet?

William

 

Yes it can- download any Linux distro you like.