Optical Drive Failiure

For whatever reason, the optical drive in my NP9170 keeps failing. I purchased it september of last year, and the origional optical drive failed earlier this year. I did a cross ship on it, and the new drive worked for about 2 months, and today I just noticed that it failed also.

The exact problem:
If I insert a disk, it will spin up like normal, but after going for around 10 seconds, it stops. Nothing pops up on the screen, no error messages or anything to run the disk.


So far, I have tried rebooting a few times and removing the drive.

Is the drive dead?

 

The few times something like that has happened for me was because either the disc format wasn't supported by the drive, or the autorun file on the disc was bad. I doubt that these days the disc format is an issue (unless you are trying to play a Blu-ray in a DVD), but you can also try navigating to the drive through Windows Explorer and launching the contents from there. If the drive isn't showing up there, then I would say the drive is probably bad. The only thing I can say is to make sure all the connections are in place and tight, since you have removed the drive. I guess this also assumes that you know for sure the disc itself is good, and will run in another drive?

Either way, if you bought it September of last year then you should still be under the warranty period (I am assuming you bought it new). Contact your reseller or builder and they will probably be happy to send you out another drive.

 

It's not very common for a disk drive to go bad, let alone have it go bad and replaced only to experience the same trouble again. There might be an underlying cause of the failure, whether hardware or just caring for the machine in a particular way. Probably going to be tough to diagnose remotely but I'd get in touch with Malibal if that's where your machine is still from originally and see if they've come across similar cases. Might ultimately require sending in and having it get looked at.

 

You tried retail media and not burned media?

 

Also as far as diagnosing this issue, does it do this with a factory made DVD, like a genuine Windows DVD, or a store bought Music CD.

Does it do this issue with these or just burned DVD's and CD's?

--

 

I had this exact problem on my last laptop. I had the optical drive replaced twice under warranty, and it failed immediately after my warranty expired as well. I never got an answer from the tech people, they seemed to believe I had back luck. I had my doubts. Now my last one was a HP laptop with poor build, so not like your sager, but if you can try to get the tech to look for an underlying problem while you are in warranty in might be worthwhile. I ended up purchasing an external optical drive. Not ideal.

 

The disks I have tried are (first) A COD 2 disk. I tried all of the disks for the game, none were read. I have not used them before. (Second) A Command and Conquer disk. I have played this game on my laptop many times, including with the current disk drive. There is no visual damage to the disk.

I have not tried the factory DVD, but I can do so.


Also, I originally purchased the laptop through LPC-Digital, so it is pretty much a Sager build.


In regards to my treatment of my laptop (condensed to only things that are relevant):
When school was in session, I took it to school every day. While carrying it I put it in my padded bag, and it never suffered damage. I almost never carry it around while it is turned on, and nothing has physically happened to the optical drive.

 

Yeah sounding like there might be an underlying hardware issue. I'm sure Larry will get you sorted out if you purchased through them.

 

If it's spinning, at least it sounds as though the motor is good. IF there is any hardware malfunction, it could be the eye in the drive. Try to recreate the problem across different types of media.