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HELP! NEC DVD+RW ND-5100A on Inspiron 8600 doesnt read/write anymore
I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 running Win XP Pro sp2 just stopped working since Dec 9th 2005 (if the date matters!!!). Not sure whats up coz windows recognizes the drive but does not display any info on it. Just refuses to display any info. No error is produced either. Its been working perfectly the last 2 years.
- the drive shows up as "UNKNOWN" in Device Manager and not under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers as some documents suggest it should display under.
- Tried the following ...
-
- un-installing the driver
- Disconnected (using the "Safely Remove Hardware" option) and reconnected the drive
- un-installed the drive and rebooted
- reinstalled sp2
- Manually adding the hardware - does not allow me to select any options. Simply adds the device back
- installed the Roxio easy CD creater patch ver5.4.5 (again)
- installed the driver from a remote (shared) drive (win XP cd) - doesnt install coz it finds the same driver. - how do I override it and force the install if in fact the driver is corrupted???
The only thing that seems different is that windows always adds the hardware back as a CDROM and not as a DVD+RW.... and still doesnt let me read from the drive.
Any known cause? Any suggestions?
Do I need to do a Windows XP reinstall {hoping to avoid this tho :-( ?} If I do need to reinstall xp how do I go about doing that when the drive is not being recognized!!!!????
I didnt mention it earlier .. I did download the firmware patch for the NEC drive from the dell website and applied it.
I did notice a bios upgrade do you think it might be worth the try to apply that patch as well? The fixes/enhancements do not however cover these drives.
- I encountered success of sorts ... partial atleast, so atleast it tells me that my drive isnt dead.I flashed my bios to ver A14 (from the dell site) and I was able to read / install from a H&R Block CD. But strangely I couldnt read the original XP SP2 CD, NIS 2006 nor a DVD RW that I had written to on the same drive.The XP SP2 CD hung windows explorer and I had to to close the window, the NIS 2006 CD didnt cause the same problem but made strange noises and even a crackling noise as if some arcing was taking place while trying to read and the DVD RW just didnt respond. So it seems like a driver or even a XP issue.I remember running across a windows xp knowledge base article on something similar .. should look that up and see if I can find a solution.So I need to do something more yet! Will keep the forum posted if I find a solution yet.
- i posted the same thing here, my DVD+RW ND-5100A in the 8600 stopped reading cd-roms altogether. It wouldnt even boot with a cd.
As i hate troubleshootings, i just "borrowed" a 8600C with nec 6100 burner from someone. Swapped the drives, and yes it was my burner that was faulty.
(Not that the high mechanic sounds when a cd was inserted didnt convince me)
this was my second dvd burner that died in the 8600, first one after 1 year.
Since my 1 year collect and return was over, i had to refer to my countrys 5 year consumer law, but all in all it was over after 15 min on the phone.
my first burner was lg 4040 (?)
2 burner nec 5100
3 burner i got some weeks ago a sony r-56, an rebadged liteon 852
Both burners was delievered at my door by service people, after 3 days of initial call
bacillus
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Posted January 14th, 2006 12:00