3150 or 3200 Laptop Optical Drive Issue

Hey guys,

I am posting on behalf of a friend with either a 3150 or 3200. He ran CCleaner a year ago and ever since has not been able to use the DVD function of the drive. I am not sure what is going on as I do not have access to the laptop nor have I encountered this issue before. I was not able to find any good info to solve this, anyone have an idea? driver issue, bios issue, or hardware failure? ty for you help

Update on the specs:
AMD athlon XP-M 2000+ 1.05 GHz. 1GB ram.

Not sure if this narrows it down, but mabe

 

What specifically do you mean by 'DVD function'? This drive is a DVD read/CD read-write device. What is it that he cannot do?

CCleaner is a great tool - in the hands of the very knowledgeable. Like handing a loaded gun to a kid, and not mentioning that it is loaded, if the user just runs the defaults.

 

Sorry, I meant to say it wont read the DVDs he puts in. It will read CDs however.

 

This is not quite as rare as it would seem. Most folks don't realize that a DVD drive has two separate lasers in them, one for the CDs and one for the DVDs. It has been known to happen that the DVD laser (touchier than the CD laser) will fail while the CD function keeps on ticking. As far as CCleaner, I'm pretty sure it was just a coincidence.

The only way, unfortunately, to check it out is to do a replacement of it. The fact that the CD is still working says the rest of the drive is OK.

Rick

 

TY for all your help, I will forward this information to him.

 

The 3200 series Averetec products used a slimtype sony drive that is notoriously twitchy and prone to failure on the read head. I have a 3270-eh1. I found this out the hard way. Your buddy may have used the cleaner because he was having problems and thought it would help and the read head just failed. The symptoms in MY case were that things were working fine and then suddenly the drive would read CDs but NOT DVDs. Then it would NOT work at all one time and read a CD the next. Then it just QUIT. The computer could always FIND the drive, but there simply was NO information on the disk. Replacing the read head with a new unit that I bought on eBay through a reputable vendor worked WONDERS! I did not find my unit listed but I found a seller that seemed to have everything and used the "Ask Seller a Question" link to ask if he had one of MY units available. He said he did and he set up a way that I could bid on one of his auctions and get my item shipped to me in just a few days. Going this way was cheaper than buying a new drive that I really didn't need. The read head I had originally had lasted about 2 years or so and I figure if the new one does the same, I should be OK since I only paid about $25 total with shipping. I suspect the 3150 is probably made with the same drive and suffers from the same problems.