DVD drive not recognized in Laptop

Hi,

I have an Acer Aspire 5310 notebook. Recently, the DVD drive got missing on the My Computer window.

I checked Device Manager, but there is no entry for DVD drives at all.
(As if there is no DVD drive installed at all)

But when I press the Eject button, the tray ejects out, and when a CD is loaded, and closed, the light blinks, and I hear the sound of the drive as if trying to read the disk, making the normal sound. Then it stops.

Also, when the computer is switched on, the light blinks, and seems to be working, but was not able to boot from the CD drive.

Please help.

Thanks.

Haas2

 

Try to enter into the Bios on your laptop. Its usually F2 or Delete, but with some computers it may be F1 or F8.

In the Bios, you will find a boot order. You must select the optical drive as thr first boot device, if you want to boot from your optical drive.

If no optical drive is found in the Bios, than your drive is failing an it needs to be replaced.

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the quick response, K-TRON.

The option for CD/DVD: is just vacant without any info about the drive.
Unlike for the HDD, IDE0:... (drive details)

It just went off the My Computer list after browsing yesterday.

Is there no way to get it working again?

Thanks.

Haas2

 

my old laptop had a similar problem
after hitting the dvd drive area, sometimes it just didn't show up
after restarting it solved the problem
it might not be connected internally?

 

Thanks Sir Travis D,

I'll try opening it. But the DVD drive behaves as if it works (i.e connected): it ejects the tray, the light blinks, the disk spins and all the sounds from the drive as if normal, but then it stops. Also the drive is not listed on My Computer or device manager.

Haas2

 

It seems as if your drive has failed. The Bios is the ultimate reader of every component of the system. If the bios cannot read the drive, the drive no longer works properly.
optical drives tend to die without notice.

You can try downloading firmware from the optical drive's manufacture, and if that does not pick it up, than you have to get a new optical drive.

EDIT:
When you open the drive, try physically moving the tray which the lens is on. It may have simply moved too far, causing the drive not to be read by the system

K-TRON

 

Hi K-TRON & Sir Travis D

It is now working fine.

What I did was, I removed the drive and tried it on a Toshiba Satellite. It worked then, the BIOS registered the MAT****A... drive & XP Bootable CD loaded, so I knew the drive was still good (I told you the lights were blinking, normal operating sound,...)

Then I cleaned up the contacts, and fixed it back up.

Its working!! Problem solved.

Thanks a bunch!!

Haas2

 

Awesome, that is good news.

K-TRON

 

Hi Guys. I have the exact same problem as Haas2.

What is interesting about my situation is that if I update my BIOS firmware the drive appears in the explorer after the first restart. But this only happens with the first restart. Every subsequent restart results in the drive not being displayed.

So if I want to use my optical drive i need to update BIOS. restart. and use. every subsequent restart results in me having to update BIOS and restarting again to be able to use my drive. this method has worked without fail. but is a bit cumbersome.

I had a spare harddrive lying around so i decided to install windows on to it, to have a play in a safe area. I removed the original hdd with the hidden recovery partition because it had important data on it. The spare drive i installed does not have the hidden partition so the ALT+F10 function should not work. The thing is. If i press it at boot-up anyway. The computer beeps like crasy for about 5 seconds and then continues as per normal. BUT the optical drive is visible, if i dont press alt+f10 the optical drive is not displayed. this has also worked without fail.

I want to be able to use my old drive. And i dont want to press alt+f10 every time i boot my comp up with the new drive. ANy ideas what is going on? I'm a bit stumped. AT first i thought that maybe windows1 was corrupting the bios. but two seperate installations are behaving the same way. the drive itself is fine. once i get it to display it works and reads data without any problems. the connections are fine as well. just confusing really. please help.

 

i still have this problem and am no closer to the solution