Corrupted DVD prevents ejecting?

Every so often when I insert a DVD-R that's supposedly unreadable into a DVD burner, the drive would completly disappear off my system and prevents me from ejecting the tray. Not only that I have a pack of new DVD-R's and some of them don't even work. Is it possible for new DVD-R's to be corrupted or is it the driver itself?

I don't understand how DVD recognition works. If it fails to read it, shouldn't it give you an error message saying it's unreadable or something? Instead of that, it just makes the drive disappear and locks my tray, thus cannot eject.

 

Sounds more like something wrong with your drive than the DVD's. If I put a corrupt or damaged disk in my drive, it just does nothing.

 

It should give you a "cannot read disc" error. Try reinstalling the drivers for your DVD player. If that doesn't work, chances are you're going to need a new DVD drive.

 

I tried to update the drivers from Dell's website, but it killed it. I flashed it with the newer firmware. I can no longer use the dvd drive anymore. I have an older firmware, but I don't know how to flash it because my drive is not recognized.

 

That definitely sounds like a physical problem with the drive. It's probably just dead.

What Dell model do you have, and are you still under warranty?

 

Inspiron 1720. I'm out of warranty unfortunately. Well the DVD burner was still crappy to begin with (along with other crappy hardware companies stick in).

If I remember correctly the model of my dvd drive is something like TSST TS-632D, from the manufacturers of samsung and toshiba. I shouldn't have flashed it lol. More importantly it shouldn't be up on the support page if it's going to cause problems. I used the service tag support page from Dell's site to ensure I don't download the wrong drivers/firmware. Looks like it's not safe proof.

 

I don't think it's the firmware update that caused your problems; your drive was probably just a bad egg. Obviously, there are thousands of other Inspiron 1720 owners who have successfully updated their TSST drive firmwares, otherwise there would have been lawsuits and Dell would have had to remove the firmware, at the very least. Besides, that particular TSST drive (the TS-L632D) has been used in plenty of other Dell notebooks without issue.

You can always buy a replacement optical drive and perform the replacement yourself. That particular model can be found for around $50, although you can replace yours with pretty much any physically compatible drive (i.e. make sure it's the right physical size, PATA/SATA connection, etc.)

 

Well, the bad flash killed it from what the folks from another forum told me. I'll see if I can disable it in the bios. Edit: disabled it, now I can boot normally.

 

Even if it was the flash that dealt the killing blow, it still suggests an underlying problem or defect with your particular drive, rather than the firmware flash being a drive-killer. Just think of how many countless other 1720 owners have successfully flashed their optical drives.

If your drive had absolutely no issues at all before the flash, then I would be suspicious. However, since your drive was already acting up, I believe it was a lost cause to begin with.

 

Um I was just wondering. since you said it's the dvd drive's fault, how did the new DVD-R's come out as RAW? I tested them on my bro's computer and it says it's RAW when I checked in properties. Is it the dvd manufacturers fault or the DVD burner's fault? It would be scary if a dvd burner can corrupt your discs by simply inserting them into the tray.