windows xp - DVD drive not reading

07
2014-07
  • Blurf

    My friend brought over his budget rig for a DVD drive that wouldn't read disks to see if I could solve the problem (I can't). He's running Windows XP on an ASUS N-MX-SE Plus board, the drive is an LG GSA-H54N DVD RW drive. The drive appears in BIOS and on My Computer, but won't read any disk in it (D:\ is always an empty folder whether there's a disk in the drive or not). I updated the firmware and the problem persists. Is there anything else I can do to fix this?

    • Answers
  • arielnmz

    I've had an issue where my drive won't burn any DVDs, it would throw very diverse errors: I/O error, calibration error, even fixation error (yes, once the disk was burnt and throwing everything to the trash). It ran on a power source with a single power output (like those that resemble a laptop charger). I checked it and it was delivering a constant 12V and 5V and it was rated for 80W, more than my drive would need. But anyway, I got a 250W internal power source and did the paperclip trick to turn it on. Connected my drive and tested it. It burnt 6 complete 4.5 GB to 4.7 GB ISOs without any issue, so I would blame:

    1. The power capacity of the PSU. It may be topping its capacity. Try removing any additional drives and PCI cards. Check your temperature, this is very unlikely but your fans may be drawing some extra power.
    2. The voltage. Check if the tension delivered is 12V or 5V continuous.
    3. The drive itself. It may just be #REKT.

    By the way, my drive is a cheap LG GH24NS90, it works wonders.


    • Related Question

    windows - Why will multiple dvd/cd-rom drives stop reading?
  • ddc0660

    I'm having difficulty with two dvd/cd drives. When I updated from XP to Vista, I noticed they wouldn't work. I could add cds or dvds to the drives and they would attempt to read the disk, but never "found" a disk in the drive. Vista showed the drives existed without problems. I updated their drivers and nothing changed. I thought perhaps, oddly, both drives were going bad.

    Then I got Windows 7, and I figured I'd have to do some gymnastics in order to get it onto my system without a working disk drive. However, I can boot from the Windows 7 disk fine! I installed 7 hoping that it was a Vista problem and I'd reclaim my drives, but that is not the case. The same symptoms persist.

    Thoughts?


    • Related Answers
  • ddc0660

    As it turns out, I swapped one of the bad drives with a known good one. The known good one works in this desktop while the bad one I pulled from this machine does not work in the other desktop. So something is wrong, at least, with that one drive.

  • Kara Marfia

    Upgrade of xp to vista to 7? I'm amazed that this is the worst problem. ;) i'd go for a clean install. You could probably clean oout drivers, startup apps, services, and registry settings to find the issue...but a clean install ends up being faster, more often than not.

    Though you could try booting to safe mode, to see what happens.

  • xciter

    I would suggest checking if there is a firmware update for the drive itself. A couple of year ago that was what fixed one NEC drive of mine.