averatec 3200 dvd/cdr/w died...help please!

My son has a series 3200 Averatec with a "QSI CDRW/DVD SBW242B" cdr/dvd combo. The device manager says its working properly, but it's deader than your proverbial doornail. We've uninstalled it and re-installed it to no avail. He's visiting from San Diego for the holidays, so of course his recovery disks aren't here with the computer. Any ideas on how to bring it back? Thanks in advance! (arghh.......)

 

Can't read a disc ? Try blowing some air in the drive tray

If that doesn't work, open the drive, you should be able to see the optical lense, use a Q-TIP (no water, no nothing) and gently rub it. Try again

No go ? See if it's still under warranty

I don't recommand using any kinf of alcohol on the lense, I killed a drive that way

 

I have the 6130 Series with a dvd-r and have had some issues as well. Oh it burns, but the one data-dvd had a crc error when I was trying to pull the data back off it and the two video-dvd (copy of movies I own to take on the road) would skip for 1 second ever 10 seconds and skip ahead sometimes when there was a chapter break. Anyone else have this problem? I also noticed that each time nero drive check looked at the dvdr it wopuld read diff specs?? (2x or 4x and sometimes 8x) I hope this is only a software issue. Maybe its a driver thing? I bring it up here as the solution to his problem may be the same to mine and vise versa!

 

OK:
I realize this info is going to come WAAAAYY too late to help the original poster but I had a similar problem and thought I would share my experience for others reading this post. 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. 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.

There are probably a great number of Averatec products made with this drive. The one I had was a Sony Lite-On unit. It was officially listed as the Sony/LiteOn SOSW-852s. The part you probably need to replace is the CD/VCD/DVD±RW Laser Pickup or Laser Pickup for short. ;-) Make sure you have the exact drive specs for your PC. God only knows what has happened in the past to our babies in the past if we weren't the original owners.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------