4270 Optical Drive sticks out and fails!

Hey everyone,
I read the notebookreview.com review for the 4270 notebook, and pretty much bought this beauty based on that, and the specs/cost! If you read the review, you notice that the computer arrived to him with the dvd drive sticking out a little, and didn't work. He fixed it twiddling some screws, though I have been unable to find the same results.

I think that the 4270 does have "build quality" issues, as my optical drive also arrived protruding and is undetectable in BIOS or Windows. Hmm. In fact, I noticed that a display model in my local Circuit City had an identical problem, asked the salesman and he just whimpered something about customers beating up the display models.

I've had a poke around with a screwdriver, but cannot find the "set screw" that the reviewer loosened to fix his up. I'm hoping that this will fix my little problem too, as other than this (major!) problem, it's a beauty.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this, or knows of how to fix it. I am reluctant to go through the painful RMA procedure.

Thanks!

 

Hi. I wrote the review. I can't totally remember which screw it was, but it's on the bottom of the notebook on the CDROM side. It's not one of the 7 that releases the big panel. I think it's the one right at the edge on the lower middle part of the left side as seen in this photo: http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/6556.jpg

The trick is you have to push the drive in quite hard because you are plugging it in. Maybe you already have the right screw.

 

Wow! Thank you SO much. I was wondering if this was the problem, that effectively the drive wasn't inserted, but saveateagle.com had placed a nice Warranty Void sticker over the screws that let you fully remove the drive.
So I just adjusted the screw you suggested, and pushed firmly and hey presto, we have optical goodness.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

(As a side note as to why this problem was becomming so frustrating, I bought it at saveateagle.com for a bargain price of $995, free shipping no taxes for a refurb. Originally a 4265, they forgot to ship it, and when I reminded them of my order they decided to give me the 4270. Unfortunately it came sans optical functionality, and their customer support was terrible. Almost no response to my enquiries, and insistences that I get some kind of replacement. 7 emails and 2 unreturned phone calls later, I resorted to forums to help me. Hallelujah!)

 

jhall006,

I feel sorry for you having thie problematic lappy :-( I just bought a brand new 4270 at Microcenter for about the same price as yours after two rebates.

 

d'oh!