Optical Drive Problems

[heelheadover]

I have an A317S. The optical drive has stopped working and is not shown under 'My Computer' or under 'System Properties/Hardware/Device Manager'.

Any help please?

Thanks

[kee-lo_]

Check that the drive is firmly plugged into the drive bay.

[heelheadover]

Thanks for your reply.

How do I check?

[kee-lo_]

Usually there's a switch which releases the drive, then just push it back in.

[heelheadover]

The two switches which open the drive don't work (presumably because the laptop doesn't think there's an optical drive there.) Have opened the drive with a paperclip (as per manual) closed it again and still nothing.

[kee-lo_]

No thats not what I meant
Is that a multi-bay? IE, can you put a battery there instead?

[heelheadover]

No, it's just a DVD/CD drive on the side of the laptop. Can't remove the whole thing, just open the drive.

[rich912]

I am not sure whether the A series has a removable bay but I don¿t think so.
I have experienced this problem on a much older model with a fixed bay and the problem was that the connecting ribbon had come loose as a result of not supporting the tray when inserting CD¿s.
This was only diagnosed and fixed by opening the notebook ¿ something that is not very wise if the machine is under warranty.
A call to Sony is the other alternative.

[heelheadover]

Still under warrany - only three months old and already had machine replaced once as optical drive kept getting stuck when closed.
Guess it's another trip to the retailer?

[kee-lo_]

Yes Rich is right, probably best to call Sony on this one, though when you start up, does the light flash? Can you open the drive when it's booting?