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    DVD Drive Problem, Help

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Dut1979, Nov 14, 2006.

  1. Dut1979

    Dut1979 Newbie

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    Hi I am having a problem with my DVD drive and am running out of ideas of how to fix this and am hopeing someone here might know what I need to do or might a least have some suggestions that I have not thought of or found on forums.
    The Drive is a Mat****a UJ-831Da DVD/CD combo drive on a Sony Vaio VGN-FS550 running XP SP2.
    Here is the problem(s) I am having,
    1. If I start up my computer with the dvd drive empty after the bios startup the dvd drive starts spinning and all I get is a blinking cursor in the upper left of the screen.
    2.If I have a disc in, I end up with an all black screen and no cursor.
    However if I press the eject button on the drive before the bios start and leave the drive open XP starts up just fine. I then can close the drive and everything runs fine. If I then put a dvd in, the dvd plays fine in XP, but
    3. I cannot eject dvd by pressing the eject button or if I right click the dvd drive in my computer to eject the disc it freezes up the entire computer.

    I recently tried useing the Ubuntu desktop CD that "allows you to try Ubuntu without changing your computer at all" and immediately started haveing these problems after checking out ubuntu, so I think this is was the initial cause of the problem. I previsously did not have any issues.

    Here's what I've tried so far to correct the problem.
    -Complete System Recovery, I thought this would have solve the problem.
    -Uninstalled and Installed the DVD drive(r)
    -Tried change my bios to read the hard drive before the optical drive at start up.

    I contacted sony support and they gave me no support at all, just to uninstall and then restart the computer, I told them I already did that and they said to send the computer in for service, meaning I would be out several hundred dollars and a laptop for about 3 weeks.
    I really do not want to resort to doing that but I want a properly functioning dvd drive so any help would be greatly appreciated.
     
    Dut1979, Nov 14, 2006
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  2. Dut1979

    Dut1979 Newbie

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    Hi thank you for the suggestion.
    I i think I have resolved this issue.
    So far my drive is functioning properly.
    If this post will be left for future reference this is what I did to correct the issue in case others encounter this same problem.
    I had to create an XP Start Up CD ROM.
    I followed the instructions in the link below to do this as you can only download floppies from microsoft which are of little use if you dont have a floppy drive.
    http://tips.vlaurie.com/2006/recovery-console-for-those-without-an-xp-disk/
    I then rebooted and ran the repair tool and ran FIXMBR.
    And my problem appears to have been solved.
    It appears the Ubuntu live CD created a non standard boot record and FIXMBR changes it back to the standard record for XP.
    After doing this my drive has been working properly since then.
     
    Dut1979, Nov 14, 2006
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