New Compaq Presario issues

A friend recently acquired a Compaq Presario V3100 (Mobile Sempron 3400+, 40GB SATA HD, 256MB DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Integrated Graphics).
The HP/Compaq website seems to indicate that this machine should have a DVD/CDRW combo-drive installed, but Windows indentifies the drive as a "Mat****a DVD-RAM".
There are two issues:
1: Sometimes the drive is shown in Device Manager and My Computer, and sometimes it doesn't appear at all.
2: When the drive does make an appearance, it won't run. No autorun to install applications, no indication that there's even a disk in the drive, and double-clicking the drive icon won't start it up.
It seems odd that this drive wouldn't be set up to run, right out of the box.
Maybe I've overlooked something in setting up the machine (this is the first laptop I've spent any time with).
Of course, the glut of trash software choking this Windows installation is worth a post of its own!!
I'll probably eventually have to do a clean reinstall from a "real" Windows XP disk...

This looks like a great forum.
Any insights will be appreciated.

 

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Do a system restore, if the problem remains you have a hardware problem (duh) , either the dvd drive, or the motherboard.


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http://www.zhangduo.com/udi.html


Unknown Device Identifier 5.02


Freeware

Unknown Device Identifier enables you to identify the yellow question mark labeled Unknown Devices in Device Manager. And reports you a detailed summary for the manufacturer name, OEM name, device type, device model and even the exact name of the unknown devices. With the collected information, you might contact your hardware manufacturer for support or search the Internet for the corresponding driver with a simple click. With this utility, you might immediately convert your unidentified unknown devices into identified known devices and find proper driver on the Internet and contact the hardware device manufacturer or vender. Known devices recognized by Microsoft Windows will also be analyzed independent of the operating system.

You are suggested to do a thorough driver backup with My Drivers after you have identified all the unknown devices with their proper device drivers software installed.


Supported OS: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003. Future OS are supported via the online update. You might even run the small freeware utility from CD or floppy.

 

Go to your control panel then system then hardware and device manager. Check and make sure it shows there and has the drivers installed.If all looks good there i would remove the single screw on the bottom of your laptop and slide the drive out and back in. Do this of coarse with the computer turned off and the batter removed. If it still does not work i think it would be safe to say your drive is defective.If so im fairly sure compaq will mail you a new one without sending your computer back in. If it was me and i had to get a replacement, i would check and see about replacing it with a DVD burner instead of the DVD/CDRW combo as i dont think it costs much more.

 

Thats correct identification for DVD/CD RW combo drives which include the DVD RAM capability. I have a LG DVD/CD burner combo drive in my V3019 and it too is identified as a DVD RAM drive.

 

WeAreNotAlone:
- Can't do a system restore, as I turn off that function on all my XP machines...
- Unknown Device Identifier looks like a very helpful bit of software, thanks for that link!

kituwa:
- I'll try removing and reseating the drive. If replacement is necessary, upgrading to a DVD
burner sounds like a good idea.
- When the drive does appear in Device Manager, the correct drivers are installed and the drive is said to be "working properly"...

miner:
- Thanks for that clarification. I suspect I'm not the only user confused by the DVD-RAM identification.

Thanks to all for your suggestions. I should have an opportunity to work on the machine again over the weekend, and I'm more confident now that I can make some progress.

 

I just want to add that the drive IS a DVD burner. Windows just identifies it as a DVD-RAM drive because it is DVD-RAM capable. Windows has native support for DVD-RAM discs (as long as it formats the disc).

Most new DVD burners support DVD-RAM, even though DVD-RAM is anything but new.

However, the drive should very well be a DVD burner too. It would be highly unusual and very 1998-like for the drive to support DVD-RAM but not the other handful of standards.

http://nero.com/nero6/enu/Info_Tool.html

That should tell you what the drive is or isn't capable of.

It really sounds like the drive isn't seated properly. If you reseat the drive and it still doesn't work, call up HP/Compaq and get them to replace it for free (of course, don't tell them you reseated the drive ). Or if the notebook is within the return period from the store, just take it back and exchange it. No reason to spend money buying a new part that should work out of the box! It would be much more wise to take the money that might be spent upgrading the DVD drive and throw in some more memory. Windows XP chugs with 256MB. Even just upping it to 512 would improve performance pretty significantly.

 

beachesandmusic,
- Thanks for that further clarification, and the Info_Tool link.
If reseating the drive doesn't work, we'll call HP support.
You're right about the RAM, 256 just isn't enough to provide a pleasurable computing experience. I'm going to add another 512, but frankly, I'm reluctant to mess around in there. It certainly doesn't look anything like the desktop PC memory slots I'm familiar with, and the website instructions aren't particularly helpful, either; the illustrations show a machine that looks very different (in the RAM bay) than this V3100.

Will report the results of my efforts over the weekend.