CD/DVD drives have stopped working...

[blueball]

Definately off

You can try it with it turned on but only if you like blue smoke and melted PCs

Definitely off

[tensim]

Alrighty then... I've swapped the drives around (with the machine switched off ), hasn't helped... When I put a disk in, the mouse cursor shows the CD icon, the drive makes the appropriate noises (for a little bit) and then it just seems to get stuck somehow, it sits there making a little 'seek' noise every half second or so, nothing else happens...

So the drives are cactus, is this the conclusion I should reach? How can 2 newish, good brand name (I thought?) drives both die at once? seems to be bad luck in the extreme...

I've having PC issues all round at the moment, I've got 2GB of RAM that seems to be faulty (PC won't boot when it's in there, get a BSOD), Lightroom keeps opening up randomly on startup (can't figure out why!), and I keep getting the 'ATI display driver stopped working but has recovered' error message quite frequently... My BIOS settings have also occaisionally reset themselves back to default, again for no reason that I can see.

I wonder if it's all related somehow?

cheers

[Webby]

Well the are only two components (or really bad luck) that link graphics problems, dvd drives playing up, ram messing around and bios settings playing up. And they are the motherboard and the power supply don't suppose you have spares to test with?

[Splash]

Have you tried booting from a CD as yet? This will prove whether the fault is with the hardware or if it's a problem with Windows. I have a sneaking suspicion that a bootable CD will work fine.

[tensim]

Have you tried booting from a CD as yet? This will prove whether the fault is with the hardware or if it's a problem with Windows. I have a sneaking suspicion that a bootable CD will work fine.

Will have to get access to a DVD burner for this... my laptop burner has been out of action for ages (it's an oldish lappie). will have to go into work to set one up I guess.

Is this the best option to create a boot CD?

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com

cheers

[Webby]

Yeah that will work nicely and can be a useful tool to have around as well, but any old bootable cd would do the job, windows disc for example.

[tensim]

OK then, remembered I had my work laptop at home, so have used it to create the boot CD off of UBCD... burnt the ISO with Roxio, seems to have worked (how do I check?)

Went into my BIOS, switched primary boot to CD, restarted. PC tryed to boot off the CD, had a blank screen for about a minute and then it booted through to Windows... so I'm assuming it went to the 2nd boot option when it couldn't use the CD?

If I try the other drive it just sits there at the 'Boot from CD:' prompt indefinitely... eject the CD and it goes to a screen asking me to choose a OS to use, choose Vista and away it goes...

Both drives activity lights sit there blinking away whilst this is happening.

So does this tell me my drives are dead?

If so, does anyone know where in London I can go to pick one up for around the same price as online, ie less than £20? Saves waiting a few days for one to get to me from Scan!

[kmac]

Try the boot cd in your work laptop just to make sure it works and you've burnt the ISO correctly

if it works in your laptop then your drives are dead

[tensim]

I've ordered another DVD drive (an Optiarc this time), will be here tomorrow... shall see if this works!

BTW, is there a particular way to install a sata DVD drive? or is it fine to just plug it in and switch the PC on?

Cheers

[tensim]

Well the new drive was duly delivered at 0830 this morning, thanks Ebuyer (btw, why doesn't Scan do Saturday delivery? At least, I couldn't find the option...)

Anyhoo, plugged it in, booted up and no problemos it works fine straight off the bat. So I guess the p.o.s Samsungs can be RMA'd to Scan, but I'll just get 2 more back won't I? Guess I'll see how long they last...

Don't buy Samsung, that's my lesson learnt from this (fair or not, 'once bitten, twice shy' as they say!)

thanks for everyones input on this, it's been appreciated