Broken Disk Drive - Please help

Hello!

I own a Dell Inspiron 710 Laptop. Recently my disk drive stopped working. When I insert a working CD in the disk drive, the CD is accepted - it then spins and makes noises and the green light goes on and off - but when all the noise stops, nothing happens. I open 'My Computer' - 'D Drive' - and it is empty. Its as though there is nothing in the disk drive. So I am assuming that the disk drive is broken.

Can someone with a little more experience help me fix this problem? I'd like to think I can simply replace the disk drive with a new one - but I dont know how to go about doing that. Where to get a new one...what type to get or how to install it.

I really appreciate any help - thanks so much!!

 

You could try updating/reinstalling the driver first.

 

Why do people always answer questions like this? The drivers for optical drives are built into windows.

Now, you can uninstall the the drive in device manager
start > run
devmgmt
<enter>

go to cd/dvd drives, right click, and uninstall the optical drive causing the trouble

Reboot. On startup, windows will reinstall the device driver

Actually, though, what you describe does sound like a failing drive or a dirty drive. A cd/dvd drive cleaner may help you out.

 

That's what I mean. That's exactly what I mean. If he were to uninstall the driver in Device Manager, it would reinstall the driver. Similarly, he could download the driver from Dell.

 

i will not go much into troubleshooting issues, because usually a complete failure to read any cd means that cleaning will not help.
However, you can try to update the firmware. You can find out full info on the drive using Everest. Then you will need to obtain a firmware updater from the drive vendor and search for availability of fresh firmware, if there is any. Most likely it won't help but worth a try.

Replacing an optical drive on a laptop is actually one of the easiest things to do. They all have a standard slot form and connection. In old times DELL used to put an additional adapter socket panel on the connector, if you find one in yours, you will just need to uscrew it and mount on a new drive.
Optical drives are usually kept in place by one screw, which in most cases can be found at the back (bottom) panel of the laptop, quite close to the disk tray. Sometimes it is only held in place by a plastic lock (Fujitsu-Siemens for example)
When buying a new drive, look for one with similar face. But if you won't find any or will find a better deal, it should not be a problem, most face panels are replaceble, most likely you will be able to put the face from your old drive onto the new one.

Good luck!

 

you're terminology is inaccurate...you are not updating or uninstalling the drive by doing that, you are removing the device. The driver remains --but I suppose that is semantics.

As for cleaning not working.... i suppose our experiences are different. a dirty lens will result in the described behavior...you're right, it may not work, but it is worth a try and surprising how often something simple like this does work

 

The device is still there physically, just not associated with the driver. Rebooting reinstalls (re-associates the driver).

Downloading the driver from Dell replaces the existing driver with the new one.

(This is my understanding ).

 

There is no driver from Dell. Dell will occasionally make firmware available, but firmware is unlikely to address an issue like this.

Anyway, if removing the device and allowing windows to reinstall the device is what you meant, fine. We're then saying the same thing in two different ways.

 

Ok, that's what I meant. They're on Dells Drivers & Downloads page, and they're labeled as firmware. I wouldn't really know how much that would help in such situations, but I threw it out there as a possibility.

 

I had a reading problem on my old LiteOn DVDRW a while ago, it was playing cd's, but getting stuck on opening DVDs. Updated the firmware (which was extremely hard to find btw) and it cured it. However, finally it stopped working after a goood while coz I managed to scratch the lens somehow

 

in my case firmware helped, because the problem was somewhere in calibration

 

Most notebook optical drives are standard 1/2" (12.7mm) thick units to which notebook manufacturers add their own fixing brackets, bezel / fascia and sometimes an electrical connector adaptor. There's some useful info in this thread. You should find a detailed guide to removal of the optical drive on the Dell website - they have detailed guides for removal / replacement of parts.

Subject to your drive being a standard unit (get the model number in Device Manager then Google the specs) then you can use almost any standard slimline as a replacement (get from Newegg or wherever).

However, one final word of caution: Check in Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and see if a device with current transfer speed of Ultra DMA 2 is using one channel or is sharing a channel. If it has one channel to itself then any new optical drive will work. If it is sharing a channel then you need one set to be slave.

John