DVD rom problems with 9300

I'm using the Sony DW +- 56 A DVD burner with my 9300. I've been watching episodes of a tv series almost everyday and now I think the drive is giving up on me. It reads and loads the dvd's ok but once in a while it just skips and stops. I've tried many different media players such as Videolan and the included Dell Media centre player. I tried the dvd's on my friend's laptop and it seemed to play ok without skipping. I'm not sure if there is something wrong with the discs or the drive. I recently updated my Bios to A04 for the laptop and the PS7 firmware for the Sony drive. Any known issues of skipping on playback? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

How about updating the ide drivers. Drive could be bad. Is it runnnig hot while skipping?

 

Do u mean the ide hard drive drivers or the sony dvd rom? I already updated the sony ones already from what I can get from the dell website. I can't really tell if it's running hot but it just makes normal vibration sounds I suppose.

 

The ide controller is the connector between the motherboard and drive. Sometimes an update can fix things. You can use Windows Update them in device mamager. The optical drive is the on the secondary ide channel. Download Notebook Hardware Control that will tell you the temp on the CPU and hard drive.

 

everyone complains about the sony optical drive in their dells, they just plain suck, tell dell you want another optical drive that is NOT SONY.

 

its not an IDE problem, its the sony optical drive, its a bad one, many dell users with this drive in their system complain about it and have to get an exchange for the drive, I suggest this user contact dell and get a different brand of optical drive.

 

The chance that it was the ide driver was small, but it never hurts to try. I probably should have said firmware as well. NECs, which Dell used to use, are the best laptop drives in my opinion.

 

Actually this is not the case for me. I rec'd the 9300 w/a Samsung optical drive. I had the lappy for maybe 2 days. I noticed how bad the drive was when I first started to install BF2(Battle Field 2). Drive started making strange noises. After 1.5 hrs of trying to load the game all it did was froze and I needed to ctrl+alt+delete to cancel the loading. My first thought was that the game just couldn't be played. I then gave up and decided to put a DVD movie in and check out the 17" Widescreen TrueView screen. Drive did not notice that the DVD was there. hmmMmmM.. Tried putting in a second, didn't notice it also...strange. I looked at the DVD and both were formatted for widescreen. So i grabbed a DVD that was formatted for full screen. Drive did recognize the DVD and played fine. I called Dell CS and asked them what was the problem. She told me to go to Dell's webpage to DL the drivers. I searched the Dell webpage and they did not have a Samsung driver. She told me to go to Samsungs website and DL it from there. I was not able to locate the driver from Samsungs website. I told the CS that it was very dissappointing that they did not support the products that they shipped though it's 3rd person hardware. To make the story short I asked her to send me a Sony since I saw that it was supported on Dells support site. I rec'd the new drive and I have been able to play all movies widescreen/fullscreen and I was able to install BF2 (which plays great). No problems so far and I really think that Sony is a more superrior drive then the Samsung. That is what you may get if you ask for a diff drive.. Just a warning.