Vista Stopped My Dvd Drive

[DAZ]

I Am Running Vista Home Basic On A Toshiba Satellite L30 With A Matshita Uj-850s Dvd Drive. Everything Was Fine When I Brought The Laptop 3 Months Ago, But Since Vista Has Auto Updated My Drive Has Stopped Playing Dvds And Music Cds, But Will Still Play Programs. I Have Tried Deleting The Updates But This Did Not Work.
I Have Also Tried To Delete The Upper And Lower Filters In The Registry But They Do Not Show Up Where They Should Be. I Have Also Un-installed And Re-installed The Drive But Still Same Problem.
Has Anyone Got Any Ideas? If Not Its Back To The Shop, But I Could Do Without Losing My Laptop For A Month......

[Steve]

Hi Daz,

when you try to play a movie or music do you get an error?

Are there any errors in the Event Viewer after you try to play a movie or music?

regards

Steve

[DAZ]

I do not get any errors appear and there are no errors in the event viewer.
All that happens is the light on the drive flashes and i can feel the drive spin and then it stops and the light just stays on. I have tried different dvd viewing programs but all come up with the same result.

[Steve]

Hi DAZ,

have you tried to do a System Restore back to a date when it worked.

If it works then you can stop updates to the drive.

Have you or a friend got another PC that you can try the drive in?

regards

Steve

[DAZ]

Ok Will Try
Thks

[DAZ]

Tried A System Restore But Cannot Go Back Far Enough Before The Problem Happened. And Tried My Drive In A Friends Computer Running Windows Xp Home And Everything Fine. So I Think It Has Got To Be Vista Causing The Problem. Been Surfing Other Sites And This Problem Seems To Be Happening To A Lot Of People. I Think I May Have To Take It Back To The Shop And Get A Drive Compatible With Vista Or Change To Xp Or Wait For A Fix From Microsoft But I Won't Hold My Breath!

[Steve]

Hi DAZ,

thanks for getting back to us.

Have you rang Toshiba? I have found them very good over the phone.

regards

Steve

[zeroid]

I have the same problem. I am running Vista Home Premium on an HP dv6263cl laptop with an Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530A ATA drive. Since I updated with Vista Service Pack 1, the DVD RW drive has not worked consistently; it reads some disks, but not all, and sometimes it won't read a disk that it was able to read before. I have not observed that it makes a distinction between programs and other types of files.

I've tried the disks on my wife's notebook and it read them all without any problems. It has Windows XP Home.

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling the DVDRW driver. Didn't work.

I tried the registry fix, deleting the upper and lower filters; I found them in the appropriate place in the registry, but it didn't work for me.

I've contacted HP twice, and they were very accomodating, but so far all they've offered me are the same fixes that I've already tried and haven't worked.

Unluckily for me, I cannot System Restore to the date before I installed Vista Service Pack 1. (Unknown to me, Norton Internet Security turned off my System Restore settings. I'm never getting another Norton product again, but that's another story.)

I do have System Restore disks from the time when I just got the laptop from the store. However, that would mean having to re-install quite a lot of software, some of which I did not get an extended download period option on, and I'd hate to pay a second time for all that software.

Has anyone got any ideas? I, too, can do without losing my laptop for an extended amount of time.

[Bushman]

I also have the same problem with my drive only mine dose not even show up in my computer. I have a toshiba p105-s6197, toshiba told me my drive was most likley bad. I tried all the fixes mentioned as well. My computer was just restored with the factory disks and everything worked fine and the poof the drive was gone. If any one can help please let me know so I dont have to go through the entire process of a complete restore again.

[zeroid]

Hi Bushman,

Sorry to hear you have the same problem.

I haven't tried the System Restore option yet, I haven't backed up all my personal files yet.

I did contact HP again, and the third option they gave me was to try to physically disconnect the DVDRW drive and re-seat it. At first I wasn't comfortable with trying that, but apparently there is only one screw that keeps the entire DVDRW tray in place. Unluckily, that option did not work for me either, so the only thing left for me to try is to do a system restore. HP told me that if the third option didn't work, then most likely it's a hardware failure.

If I were you, I would try the driver install/reinstall first, it's the simplest.

If that doesn't work, then I'd try the registry fix. Apparently, there have been a LOT of people who've lost their DVDRW or CDR drives and the registry fix worked for them.

Best of luck!