Dynabook Qosimo F50 problem!

Hey all.

I was wondering if the good folks of the Toshiba forum could help me out.
My fiances sister is currently having issues with her Toshiba Dynabook, its a
Japanese laptop so I'm not sure if anyone would have had experience with this model but here's the specs:

Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit SP2
Intel Core 2 Due P8600 @ 2.4GHZ
4GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 9600GT

Model Name: Qosimo F50 Series
Model No QF55N-03U02W
FXW/G7HW

The Problem:
Last night while watching a DVD it began stuttering and making a whiny noise from the DVD drive, she tried to open the DVD drive but the button did not respond and the light which normally flashes yellow was just solid yellow. I restarted the laptop hoping it would solve the problem but to no avail, however i noticed the DVD drive had one of those little holes for manually releasing it, so i used a paper clip to pop it open. However for the rest of the night the drive did not read any DVDs or CD's and would not open unless we used the paper clip method. I checked on the Vista 'Computer' panel and the DVD drive was no longer there.

It was late so we called it a night, this morning i thought i would update the drivers to see if that would solve the problem, however as soon as i turned on the laptop, the DVD drive had returned to the 'Computer' panel and the button had began working again. It is now reading CD's and DVDs perfectly.

I was wondering is this a sign the DVD drive is nearing the end of its life? Or is it a driver related problem? Or is it common for this drive to play up?

The DVD drive model number is: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T50N

Any insight would be great! Thanks.

 

If it works, don't fix it. I have no idea what to tell you.

Good luck and keep us posted with any new progress

 

Thanks for the reply, Its working at the moment! I'll keep you posted :]