IF YOU HAVE DVD/CD DRIVE PROBLEMS - READ THIS>

[Blencogo]

Several members seem to have problems with their CD/DVD drives at the moment. As far as I know, there is no magic solution but you could try some or all of the following: -

1. See if there is an updated driver or updated firmware for your drive at Vaio-Link. Some Sony drives are re-badged from other manufacturers and you may have to search for updated downloads. For example, if you have a Sony DW-D56A drive, you can get a firmware download from HERE (Use PFS2). Many other drives are also supported on this site.

2. Use System Restore to return your Vaio to the configuration when it was last working normally.
Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore - choose a restore date before you had the problem.

3. Look in Device Manager to see if there are any errors against your DVD/CD-ROM drive.
Start -> Right-Click My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager - expand DVD/CD-ROM Drives and check the status. If there is an Error Code or a yellow triangle with a ! or ? come back here with the number and we may be able to help.

4. If there is no error and the drive is reported as working normally, try Uninstalling the drive by right-clicking on it in Device Manager and choosing Uninstall. Re-booting your Vaio will reinstall the drivers.

5. Try some different software to read/write your discs and see if that works. Also try a different brand of discs - Sony, TDK and Verbatim seem favourites.

6. Try a liquid lens cleaner on the lens and polish with a microfibre cloth ? this can sometimes help.

7. If your drive works with either CDs or DVDs only make sure the ribbon cable is not preventing the reader head from moving freely - check that the laser head in the drive can move freely for the whole range of its travel. The disc information is held on the outside tracks for DVDs and the inner tracks for CDs.

8. Last resort is to perform a full C:\ Drive System Recovery from your Recovery Discs. Make sure you back up all your Data as the contents of C:\ will be lost and your Vaio returned to the factory configuration.

If none of these work, you may have a hardware problem and you need to contact Vaio-Link. There is no point contacting them until you have carried out a Drive C:\ Recovery as this is the first thing they will ask you to do.

[Thalamus.]

hello.. i dont have problem with the dvd of my new vaio VGN-AR51M but i cant play the blu-ray dvd that comes with it.all other normal dvd play allright but not blu-ray. can you help on that please do you know why? thank you..

Hi t-pilot

welcome to Club Vaio..

Have you checked for any Win DVD BD updates either at Sony VAIO Support or via the VAIO Update Utility: double click on the Vaio Update link in your system tray and follow the instructions.?

[Acden]

I have Sony VNG-Fz11SR
with Pioneer DVD-ROM. For 4 months it worked perfectly fine. But now I can't read any DVD (Cd - I can read).

What happends? What should I do?

How can I clean the laser's head? Can I use usual cleaning wipes for monitor?

I can read CD's! But no DVD (tried different)!
What should I do without contacting service?

[joseph81o]

Hi folks,

I own a VAIO VGN-FE21H.
It looks like the SONY DVD RW DW-G520A it came with has after intensive use over the past 14 months finally packed it in.

Personally, I don't believe I'm facing a driver or software related issue, because I'm working in a dual boot invironment (WinXP MCE & Win2003 on a second partition), and the disc player now refuses to work with neither.
Device Manager believes that the device is working properly, but that is just the typical windows nonsense one has come to expect.

The fact is that after inserting a disc the tray LED flashes three times, accompanied by three audible mechanical attempts to start or read the disc, but that's as far as it will go.

The thing is, I can take any desktop apart and put it back together with my eyes shut, but since this is my first notebook I want to make sure I'm not throwing money away by purchasing an overpriced SONY replacement, that is only going to last another 12 to 18 months again.

So the question I'm facing now is, do I have to purchase a replacement of SONY to make sure it'll fit this particular VAIO model (VGN-FE21H),
or can get a burner from a another source and can it be made (adjusted) to fit.

Any advice would be most welcome & appreciated.

Thanks.

[msar2020]

Can anyone recommend the best blank DVD's to use with a Sony DW-U54A. I can burn CD's (Mediastar CD-R-80), but cannot seem to find the right kind of blank DVD's to use (DVD-R?, DVD+R, DVD-RW? DVD+RW)?

Any suggestions. I tried Mediastar DVD-R, but all the DVD burner seems to do is to burn circles onto these discs and then say there is a "Cache synchronisation error". Happens in both Windows and Linux.

[joseph81o]

Hi folks,

I own a VAIO VGN-FE21H.
It looks like the SONY DVD RW DW-G520A it came with has after intensive use over the past 14 months finally packed it in.

Personally, I don't believe I'm facing a driver or software related issue, because I'm working in a dual boot invironment (WinXP MCE & Win2003 on a second partition), and the disc player now refuses to work with neither.
Device Manager believes that the device is working properly, but that is just the typical windows nonsense one has come to expect.

The fact is that after inserting a disc the tray LED flashes three times, accompanied by three audible mechanical attempts to start or read the disc, but that's as far as it will go.

The thing is, I can take any desktop apart and put it back together with my eyes shut, but since this is my first notebook I want to make sure I'm not throwing money away by purchasing an overpriced SONY replacement, that is only going to last another 12 to 18 months again.

So the question I'm facing now is, do I have to purchase a replacement of SONY to make sure it'll fit this particular VAIO model (VGN-FE21H),
or can get a burner from a another source and can it be made (adjusted) to fit.

Any advice would be most welcome & appreciated.

Thanks.

I'm sure you'll all be happy to know that I sorted my own problem... again.
Got a replacement drive of ebay for £28.
Adjusted the brackets, fitted my own caddy and with that I saved myself a sack full of money.

Sony wanted me to send the whole unit (notebook) to them.
Selling me a replacement drive was of course out of the question.
Yeah right... are we all stupid or what?

Thank you so very much for your advice & support.

Ps. Btw., the drive is not hot-swappable, so lets be careful out there, ok.

[trog]

Hi, I have owned a VGN-A217S for 3 years now, have replaced the CD/DVD hardware twice and have never been able to do more than watch films (sometimes) through the DVD drive, when the machine can be bothered to find it. It has only ever recorded 2 things onto DVD-R, and forget DVD-RW.And I have tried every disc on the market, and what kind of an answer is this. This is a Sony for goodness sake, we expect more.
My final conclusion after trying many attempts at resolving the issue is that this aspect of the system is basically rubbish. After spending nearly £2,000 on this machine I have not rushed to this conclusion easily and resent having had to reach it, but hey, life is short. My advice is to invest in a cheaper, generic system for DVD work, it just isn't worth the hassle.
Just to say that I love Sony's stuff, every bit of decent electronics I own is made by them but they do make some very stupid and short sighted decisions, like putting a rubbish DVD package in a fantastic laptop AND LETTING MINIDISC DIE! Not sure I'll ever forgive them for this. At least Blueray is here to stay (isn't it?)
Sorry for the rant.

[christoefour]

Hi there. First off, I want to thank all the smart guys in this thread helping everyone out.
Now then. The problem I'm having seems to be related to similar issues spread over the last few pages of this thread.

My disc drive won't recognise blu-ray anymore. there are no error messages, the drivers are all up to date, and when I insert a BR Movie DVD, I can even hear it being read. However, there isn't any auto-play and none of the DVD software I've used (WinDVD, PowerDVD) can recognise a disc. I can't explore the contents of the disc and double clicking just causes a loading icon on my cursor (and then nothing).

Furthermore, if I restart my computer with the disc still in drive, the system will hang as if it is stuck reading the contents. I've got a blu-ray player that essentially treats blu-ray movies as blank discs. Every other type of movie/data medium works fine.

My drive is a Matshita BD-MLT UJ-210S ATA
I'm using a VGN-AR31S
Vista OS


Any help at all would be extremely appreciated. I AM DESPERATE :smileycry:. Thank you.

[a4dil]

I have sony n21s notebook which i have had for 9 months.

over the last few days i have had problems with my dvd drive.

each times i enter a disc the time taken to load the disc is longer and the drive makes more noises than before.

i used to nero7 to burn avi data discs successfully, however the data verification fails. i never use to have this problem before.

ive tried nero 8 and the burn process is successful but data verfication fails.

when i use the verbatim dvd disc to play in my sony hxd870 dvd player which can play divx data discs, the player rejects it and gives a message of inreadable disc.

i also used windows explorer to burn to disc which was successful. then tried it on the dvd player which rejected it again.

[jonmerc]

hi i have a sony viao notebook, the cd/dvd is not working (56a ) i have a freecom dvd /cd on the desktop but it will not play the recovery disc that i have for the viao, does it need to be the default player if so how do i do this any help would be appreciated regards john

[Musicman]

Hi, My DVD-RW drive, a DW-U54A is playing up, as it will not recognise DVD+R discs that are 16X speed. I read on some memorex discs, that the Firmware requires updating, is this true? If so how do I go about it, as it is becoming more difficult to find slower disks.