N56V notebook - DVD ROM drive starts when I don't want it to

I recently bought a N56V series notebook. Something seems to be odd with my DVD ROM drive, which starts whenever:

1) I boot up the notebook, or;
2) I plug in an external USB device such as a memory stick, hard drive or iPod / iPhone (this happens regardless of which USB port I use), or;
3) I open or restore (or sometimes minimise) media programmes such as Windows Media Player or iTunes.

No messages appear on the screen and the DVD Rom drive stops after a couple of seconds. The external drives and programs seem to work ok, although I have had iTunes crash a few times on me lately. I don't know if it is connected in any way.

I wondered at first if this was a BIOS issue, but I have played around with the boot options and it hasn't made a difference.

I also considered that there might be a third party program which is causing this to happen, but through "msconfig.exe" I have disabled all but Microsoft services and it hasn't made a difference either.

The DVD Rom drive works fine by the way, when I need it to. But I want it to stop starting when I don't need it to. I can click it open when I am using the notebook which stops it starting during 2 and 3. But this isn't a very satisfactory solution.

Asus support have recommended I book the notebook in for a repair under warranty, but this is a bit of a nuclear option and will leave me without my notebook for quite a while. Does anybody here have a clue how I might be able to fix this myself?

Finally, I should add that the retailer I bought the notebook from (approved by Asus) upgraded the hard drive upgrade to a SSD for me. I hope this isn’t the root of the problem. Do you think this will affect the warranty and Asus’ willingness to service this if need be? I still have the original hard drive by the way, and I haven’t re-formatted it.

 

Warranty service? It doesn't sound like anything is wrong with it, per se. Optical drives spin up from time to time - especially on startup during POST. I suppose if yours was doing it excessively so, then it could have been BIOS or firmware related... but by your description at least, it sounds perfectly normal.

Your warranty should be fine. If they did not state - either verbally nor in writing - that upgrading/servicing would void your warranty, then they cannot revoke it legitimately. Although I think you should note that Asus is liable to put back the stock hard drive - even if it's not the problem - so you may want to tell them to NOT do that if you want to keep the drive.