Does your dvd drive randomly make noise/try to run when empty?

I just got an hp paviliion g4 with the new amd llano chip and of course i'm noticing little things that annoy me because that's what i do. Currently the " why is this doing this?" category belongs to my dvd drive, which seems to randomly make noise like it's trying to play a disc even though it's empty, firmly closed, and i'm not accessing a program that would require use of the dvd drive as far as i know. Any idea why this happens? Do your hp pavilions do this too where it just randomly tries to check for a disc?

I reinstalled the drivers too. I have about seven days left to decide if it's worth returning this over.


editing into my first post:

My critical battery level is at 9% and i can't seem to be able to change it, everytime i try it immediately reverts back to 9%. HP support said it has to be 9% because it needs that much power level in order to save data/stand by, but that seems really high. In a different thread for a different hp laptop, someone was able to change the % by plugging it into an outlet, but i tried that and it still wouldn't lower. Can you guys change yours? Is there an easy workaround? I'd like to get it down to 5% just to have more usable battery life.

 

Yes (dv7teq, 60xx series), but I don't think it is RANDOM. I don't think optical drives know whether they have media... they just attempt to load (spinup and fail). There is nothing unusual or wrong.

 

Do you know why they do this though? I'm pretty curious, my old dell inspiron never does this and the thinkpad edge e520 didn't either, is it an hp pavilion thing? I know drives spin to check for media after you shut it even if you didn't insert a disc, but i've never seen a laptop before that checked for media when you weren't trying to access anything media related. For instance, it spun when i was moving around power plans and then again when i was browsing neogaf.

 

My new dv6z is doing this too. Nice to know it is not a defect. However, it's not great either. I'm with turtle on this one: never in my experience have I used a laptop where the disc drive makes noises when it's empty.

 

Was your old computer on Win7? ... I believe(/assume) it may have to do with Intel Rapid Storage Software (but don't quote me however ). On my old XP, it only seems to happen at startup (as I have it listed as the first boot device)

 

my old old laptop that is now used as a desktop dell is windows XP, but the thinkpad e520 was windows 7 professional and i don't THINK it did that or at least not that i could notice.

Yes uggarocka, it's nice to know it's not a "defect" defect, so it eliminates the idea of exchanging it and hoping that the next one doesn't do that. I don't know if it's something HP will address/change with firmware/bios updates or maybe they will tell me to be less picky Xo

I emailed their HP technical support and they gave me a long list of random things to do but i don't think they understood my question since they told me to try reseating the optical drive among other things

 

my hp dv5 did that also (Vista). and now my hp dv6 is also doing that but less frequently.

 

Mine does it every once it a while. It seems to be sometimes doing it when I install something. Maybe it is just looking in the drive for installation software? It doesn't happen all that often, though, so it really isn't a problem.

 

To try to avoid a second thread, i also can't change my critical battery level below 9%, i try to and it reverts to 9% immediately after lowing it. Any tips on how to get it to 5% or so? I read a thread for some other laptop about plugging it in to an outlet then changing it but that didn't work for me. Am i stuck at 9% for life?

 

Same.
One time i thought that i had the windows 7 dvd on the drive (because the noise) and i went to my girfriend's house to re-install her laptop's OS, and when i arrived i opened the disc drive and surprise! It was empty!
Shame on my laziness by not check it on "My computer" lol

 

I originally posted this on the HP Mini 311 forums, but anyway...

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Battery -> Critical battery level: HP set the minimum to 7%.

To set it below 7%, you have to use powercfg.exe from the command prompt. The number at the end is the percentage (5% in this case). The first setting is for DC power, second if for AC.

powercfg -setdcvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT e73a048d-bf27-4f12-9731-8b2076e8891f 9a66d8d7-4ff7-4ef9-b5a2-5a326ca2a469 5

powercfg -setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT e73a048d-bf27-4f12-9731-8b2076e8891f 9a66d8d7-4ff7-4ef9-b5a2-5a326ca2a469 5

 

You can disable the DVD drive in Device manger and I have heard this can quite increase the battery life.

 

What about uninstalling the HP application that sets the notebook on the "HP Recommended Power Plan"? Seems like that may have something to do with it. I don't recall what the name of the app is, however.

 

I tried that today along with deleting a few random programs that came with my laptop like magic desktop and bilo ( just to clear away the junk). Disabling the dvd drive seems to have stopped the random drive checks, though i'm not sure if the battery life has improved. It seems like i'm getting worse battery life now that i've updated the bios ( it was one of the options under the hp support program which might be bloatware-esque but it seems good at getting updates for me automatically).

I also might try joe_dude mentioned, maybe set it to 6 or so %, i'm never going to leave it on stand by when it gets low on battery, i'm always going to shut it down, i doubt i need 9% battery life just for that.

 

Hello! I got an HP Pavilion dv6 from wally world and the dvd drives did the random noise thing. The first one did it almost every 3 to 5 min, this new one I exchanged it for does it about every 30 to 45 min. Its super annoying and i've been on enough windows 7 laptops to know its not normal. I really hope HP fixes it since its a nice computer..

 

its not just an HP issue. My asus k53 is doing it too. ive never had a laptop do this before.

at first it only did it while itunes was running. so i had to stop using itunes completely, because im sure this will cut days off the life of your dvd drive if you let it continue.

however just a few minutes ago i finished burning a dvd (ive been itunes free for a week, with no random noises) and it did it again, after i had the drive empty for 5+ minutes.

i feel like this is a definite drivers/windows 7 glitch and it needs to be dealt with because my old dvd failed after 1.5 years because of over use.
cheers
-sack

 

edit: fixed problem by uninstalling then reinstalling dvd drive. but now its back. grrrrr at microsoft.