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    W500 not seeing Blu Ray burner correctly after clean install

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by lifesizepotato, Apr 25, 2009.

  1. lifesizepotato

    lifesizepotato Notebook Enthusiast

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    EDIT: I'm leaving this thread as is for posterity, but now my issue seems really to be that my machine tells me this drive can't write DVD-R DL discs. I made a new thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4780713

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    I recently got a W500 with Vista 64. I put a new hard drive in with a clean Vista 64 install. I followed the guide somewhere on this forum, to the letter, step by step, using the drivers found on Lenovo's website. I installed the drivers in the correct order. Now my Blu Ray drive/burner won't do anything, basically. I can't watch a DVD, it says a compatible DVD encoder is not installed. Trying to burn a DVD, it tells me to insert a compatible disc, even with discs I know are good and from different manufacturers.

    The machine lists the drive as a BD-RE, which is Blu Ray recordable. However, it doesn't seem to be working correctly. Under device manager, if I tell it to update the driver, it says the best driver is already installed: CD-ROM.

    I'm wondering if I somehow missed a driver? I have had huge headaches with XP in the past when using a USB DVD-R drive, where it thought the drive was a CD-ROM. When trying to fix that, everyone told me that Windows automatically handles optical drives and their drivers correctly, despite the blatant fact that it doesn't.

    There is an optical device driver to install on the Lenovo site, however, it lists compatible DVD models and none of them are mine, the Mata BD-MLT UJ232A. It looks like it's installed correctly in the device manager.

    I do have another problem in the device manager that may have something to do with it. Under "Other devices," the following have yellow exclamation points:

    Base System Device
    Base System Device
    PCI Memory Controller
    PCI Serial Port
    PCI Simple Communications Controller

    Any help, please?

    EDIT: I installed the Intel AMT drivers from Lenovo and that fixed the PCI Serial Port/Simple Communications Controller device problems.

    I also installed some video codecs, and it seems that DVDs play fine. I'm still having trouble burning to a dual layer DVD, though.

    EDIT 2: I installed Nero to see if that might be able to get around what I thought was a Windows problem. I ran the InfoTool and it says the drive can't write dual layer DVDs! According to Lenovo's website, it can indeed handle dual layer writing. What could cause InfoTool to be so wrong? http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-69074
     
    lifesizepotato, Apr 25, 2009
    #1