7811FX CD drive stopped working

I have the TigerDirect refurb P-7811 FX and the CD drive stopped working last week. It worked fine for the first month I had it - I could read and write CDs with no issues. Now Vista doesn't even recognize the CD drive (even in Disk Management).

Has anyone else had this issue? Is it the drive itself or something wrong with the mobo that's not recognizing it? Has anyone dealt with the warranty on these refurbs yet? I have no problem with them shipping me a replacement drive, but I'd really HATE to send my laptop back, because I'm assuming I wouldn't see it for months and I sort of need it. Then again, my screen has that awful air bubble in it that shows white haze from angles on black; I'd love to get that fixed too.

Any comments? Thanks!


Jesse

 

Try uninstalling the driver and then reinstalling it.

You can also try to pull out the drive (while the computer is off) turn on the computer to see if it notices anything wrong and then replacing the drive (again while computer is off) to see if it detects new hardware.

Other than that i'm not sure, it might be a more technical problem or you might have a bad optical drive. Sometimes they just go out (its rare but happens)

 

CD drivers are handled by Vista itself so it's unlikely that a reinstall will work, but I guess I can give it a try. Haven't reseated it yet, though I meant to try that.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Update: Whaddya know... BIOS sees the drive, so I checked Device Manager from Vista and it says there's a problem with the driver. Problem is, it won't update it - I'll have to find it online.

 

Final update: Problem fixed!

Vista wouldn't reinstall the drivers - I was still getting an error code 39 on the CD drive entry in Device Manager. I Googled the issue and found the following instructions which worked like a charm:

Open the Registry Editor (Start > Run > "regedit")
Double click on "computer"
Double click on "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
Double click on "SYSTEM"
Double click on "CurrentControlSet"
Double click on "Control"
Double click on "Class"
Double click on "{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Look for the LowerFilter entry on the right-hand pane
Right click on LowerFilter and click "Delete"

Close the Registry Editor and reboot. Note: There is also an UpperFilter entry which you might have to delete if this doesn't work.


HTH!

 

so what exactly did you do unplug the cd/dvd rom. I'm having a similar problem with a m305crv gateway. I'm getting the error code PXE-E61
Please help

 

No, I didn't have to touch the drive. I just meant that Windows did NOT see the drive but the system BIOS did. Does your BIOS see the drive?

A quick Google search on your error (PXE-E61) indicates that the problem is a "media test failure", which usually seems to indicate a bad drive, an incorrect setting in the BIOS, or perhaps a bad cable. If your BIOS doesn't see the drive at all, try-reseating the drive. If that doesn't work it might be bad