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    HP L2000 ntbk optical drive problem - what to do?

    Discussion in 'HP' started by VBAjedi, Sep 8, 2006.

  1. VBAjedi

    VBAjedi Newbie

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    Several months ago, I got a new HP L2000 notebook running WinXP Home. The optical drive is a Pioneer DVDRW DVR-K15.

    Problem:
    Stopped recognizing audio CD’s (media players won’t play them, and even in Windows Explorer it shows no disk in the drive). While trying to read the disk, the drive gives off a mechanical “click” every few seconds. I first noticed it after accidentally inserting a defective VCD disk, so I thought it might be an error-correction setting that got messed up.

    At this point, the drive still recognizes DVD’s (not audio CD's or data CD's), but now they only play back really “jerky” like DMA is disabled or something. This is NOT a media-player software problem, a volume problem, or a bad disk problem.

    Things I’ve tried:
    Cleaning the drive.
    Verifying that my Primary and Secondary IDE channels are set to use DMA if available (they are).
    Under the drive’s Properties, disabling “Enable digital CD audio for this CD-ROM device” (disabled/enabled made no difference).
    Uninstalling the drive, then rebooting and allowing Windows to reinstall the drive (which it did but that didn’t fix it).
    Allowing Windows to search for an updated driver (it says it already has the most current one).
    Deleting the upper and lower filter Registry entries.

    The computer is only a few months old, and the drive has seen very light use, so I would think drive failure isn’t too likely.

    I vaguely remember having a problem like this with a drive in the past (possibly under an earlier version of Windows) and having to reset some kind of error counter for the drive. But I can’t remember the details of that and don’t know if it applies to XP Home.

    Please help! Not sure what else to try. . . and I'm in the middle of freakin' Africa at the moment and can't just send this bad boy in under warranty.
     
    VBAjedi, Sep 8, 2006
    #1
  2. brianstretch

    brianstretch Notebook Virtuoso

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    Outside of trying a firmware upgrade, which I doubt will fix it, I can't think of anything. Optical drives are easy to swap out so if you happen across a store selling slimline drives you can replace it yourself. NEC is my current favorite brand. Remember to remove your battery before doing any such hardware changes.
     
    brianstretch, Sep 8, 2006
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  3. vassil_98

    vassil_98 Notebook Deity

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    Just a suggestion, try uninstalling the primary and secondary IDE channels, as well as the drive itself. Then windows should find it and reinstall everything from scratch...

    I remember having a problem with my CD/DVD drive, which made me reinstall windows to fix it. It was related to the IDE channels but I still can't figure out how. I just know that the drive wouldn't read anything even though I had it reinstalled several times.. wierd experience.
     
    vassil_98, Sep 9, 2006
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