DVD burner not responding

[TRDCorolla1]

Ok, there's probably similar post to this but then again, it's probably unique. Here's the problem:

The DVD burner is clearly getting power because the tray opens in and out and the green light comes on when it does that. However, no media of any type are detected. Autoplay doesn't come on and there is no DVD drive icon in "Computer".

The OS we're dealing here is Windows Vista Home Premium. It's a Dell model XPS 410, but the warranty is long expired. It's a 1.5 year old PC and the case has NEVER been opened, hardware config is exactly the same since the first day, no OC done period. At first, I thought it could be Nero 8 messing it up. I took that out and still, the problem exist. Now it won't burn or detect anything CD/DVD when inserted. Boot order is the same as the first day it came, Device Manager has exclamation marks next to it though--but I already dowloaded drivers and firmware from Dell directly using the service tag number. I attempt to install it and error pops up saying that the DVD drive isn't detected or supported with this application. I did uninstall and scan for new hardware changes again. No luck.

That leads me to believe that the drive itself may have failed?

It's an office PC so nothing is done on it except office type work and media burning.

Each incident will be charged $39 not including labor or parts should we come down to that using Dell support. I told them that I will have to consider that option, but like to try other things first.

Do you guys think the drive is dead? The cables and jumper settings has never been touched since the PC came to the office. Case was never opened and it worked great up to now.

[peterhuang913]

I think it might be dead.

[TRDCorolla1]

It's so weird because it's not really an old PC. This problem was totally unexpected. I've had PCs being used as an entertainment center go through harsher punishment and still, it works beautifully for 4+ years!!! I even went into the registry to remove the "UpperFilters and LowerFilters registry entry" hoping that may solve the problem, reset the autoplay defaults in the control panel, scan for possible viruses, removed temp files, etc., and checked BIOS. Still nothing. Computer Management (Administrative Control Panel) didn't pick up the drive either.

The Device Manager clearly states that there is a problem but when I click on the "Find Solution" button, it gave back a response that it couldn't find a solution, lol

It's good to get a second opinion that it could be dead though.....thanks. What does everyone else think?

[peterhuang913]

DVD drives fail at different rates. So it might not be so much of a surprise.

[Wease]

A friend of mine asked me to work on his PC that had this same problem. All of a sudden one day Windows no longer recognized his CD Rom drive. The bios reocginized the drive, but Windows did not. I did a search on the web and found the following advise and it worked for me !!

If your CD/DVD Drives won't appear in your list of drives, you can probably correct this as follows:

Open regedit. Navigate to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Cl ***\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Export the key for backup. Delete any value named "UpperFilters" or "LowerFilters" (Only exact match!). Repeat for every ControlSet???. Reboot.

Explanation: Drivers for devices are modularized. It wouldn't make sense for them not to be, as, for example, filesystem drivers would have to know how to talk to every possible type of hard drive. Part of this modularization is called the device stack. The IO Manager interfaces with the top driver on the stack, and the bottom driver on the stack interfaces with the physical hardware.

The keys under the Class key each specify a hardware type. When hardware of that type is installed, the device-specific driver for the given device type is loaded and used. To modify that drivers behavior, a second driver--called a filter driver--can specify that it wishes to be above or below the device-specific driver. The UpperFilters and LowerFilters keys specify the name(s) of the filter driver(s). Some programs that install filter drivers are: Packet-writing support, such as InCD; iTunes.

If one of the drivers referenced in these keys cannot be found (under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es),
loading the driver for the device fails.

Alternatively, you can try this fix from the Doug Knox site:

Restore CD/DVD Drives to Explorer

[TRDCorolla1]

I removed the Upper and Lower filters with no success. Problem still exist. The .exe, I haven't tried yet. The PC is running Windows Vista though, so I don't know if it will work or not.

From the looks of things, it doesn't even look like it's being detected in BIOS either. Doesn't say the name of the drive or have any drive designation. Just some random number giberish.

[Trotter]

Have you tried updating the firmware? Firmware can become corrupted like any other file on your computer, albeit not as often.

Give it a shot. What could it hurt if it really is dead?

[TRDCorolla1]

I ended up forcing it to boot from the optical drive (removing all other entries int he boot menu, ie, floppy, hard drive, USB). It's weird because you would think it would work if you have the optical drive in the first order of the boot sequence, but it would always jump to the hard drive to find the corrupt OS which I eventually reformatted.

Now it's been working great.......