cf-51 dvd/cd-r/rw issues

I have a toughbook cf-51, last week the dvd/cd-r/rw stopped working. First things first, checked “my computer” – the drive was not listed. Next I checked on the hardware mgr. the drive was listed, with a big yellow exclamation point. – Driver installed correctly, hardware not found.

Ok, these things happen, figuring it was a drive that went bad, I call Panasonic, and get a # to the parts distributor ( heartland inc ) they get the part # and send a new drive out overnight. All is well

I remove the old drive unit, and replace it with the new one. I was never prompted with any “new hardware” msgs. Nor will it show up under “my computer” or in the device mgr. it is still listed as – driver installed/hardware not found

Did I miss something, forget to check anything ? or is it something more serious like a bad component or controller on the main board ? Warranty has long since expired as has tech support. Any help or advice would be appreciated.

 

I would think you have a bad/broken connection somewhere...

 

Does the drive show up in the BIOS ?

 

after some thought, i checked the BIOS, and the drive is listed. ( i'll also add, that the drive does try to spin on every start up, ) back into windows, under hardware mgr, the drive is still listed as stated in the previous post. next step was to delete the drive from the hardware mgr, and reboot ... no new hardware prompt, and drive is listed in hardware mgr again as stated previously. ... the next thing i did was to set the BIOS to boot from CD first, inserted the recovery disk, and started the computer.. it started to boot from the disk, when it got to the - reinstall windows / format HD / abort ... i aborted, so the drive is working, but for some reason windows is not ....

 

Have you gone into Control Panel and scanned for Hardware Changes/Additions? I've heard that some MS Updates can kick the DVD out for a while...

 

what version of windows are you running; do you have the most recent updates; have you tried "last known config" option in safe mode; have you tried the cdrom in safe mode???? I'm leaning to you need to reimage the machine. It sounds like you might have a .dll conflict in windows or a corrupt mscdex.exe (I think it is) that controls the cdrom under windows.

 

to answer the last 2 post;

i have checked for hardware changes, none were found

currently i am running MS XP service pack2 with all current updates installed. i tried reseting to a previous configuration, however it will not allow me to go back to before i ost the drive, the error msg says - due to a change in the system, windows cannot reset to this date. i have not tried the cd in safe mode, and i will try that tomorrow. sorry if this sounds ignorant, but if i re-image the HD, will i lose ay files or data stored on the laptop?

 

Yes... If you reimage you will lose everything stored.... So save it then reimage it. It sounds like a software glitch to me...

 

Agree on the reload

It's the first thing I thought of

I sold a second cf-51 to a customer because he lost the serial com port and needed it for programming two-way radios
He had a lot of software loaded and we had decided it was the most cost effective solution
When it arrived and we swapped out the hard drives to the replacement cf-51 the com port still was not working, so it was a software issue in his windows load
I ended up reloading his cf-51 and the com port worked fine after a reload

If it’s a windows issue you will have no problem booting from you optical drive and reloading windows
If it’s a hardware issue you will know right away as you you will not be able to boot to the drive

Alex