Jul302012

Why won’t my optical drive read or write files?

Dee Wheat asks:

I have Vaio, which I quickly realized was my first mistake. Now that we have that out of the way….the optical drive suddenly quit reading and writing. When I go through the troubleshooter it says it’s working fine. I also checked and it says the drivers are fine. If I drop a disk in there I can hear it trying to work, but nothing I have tried is working. I really need to get about 20 gigs of pics off of it, and while I know that storing them on disks is not optimal, it’s what I have at the moment. Help!


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9 Answers -

0 votes

Bruce Epper

July 30, 2012

Point 1: “nothing I have tried is working”. Well, what have you tried?

Point 2: Are you using a compatible disc?

Dee Wheat

I have done everything I can do without paying Sony a very large chunk of money….again. I have updated drivers, I have gone through the troubleshooting routine several times. I routinely run virus scans daily, use CCleaner, Spybot Search and Destroy, Malwarebytes, Adaware, and AVG, all of which I update every time I run them.

The disks it won’t read or write now, it would read and write no longer than a month ago, so yes, they’re compatible. This Vaio was back for repair for 11 of the 12 months of its warranty. It’s crap, and it has been since they got my $2800 for it. It’s a mistake I will neither forget nor repeat. However, I’m stuck with it until I can afford something better, which would be anything except something made by Sony.

When I try to run a disk, the light lights up, and you can hear it trying to start the disk. Ultimately, though, it will neither read nor write, as I said.

July 30, 2012
0 votes

Dee Wheat

July 30, 2012

Oh, and I can confidently say that I have used all the right swear words, multiple times and in multiple languages.

0 votes

Dee Wheat

July 30, 2012

It appears that my first reply didn’t post,despite my getting an email saying it did. It was:

I have done everything I can do without paying Sony a very large chunk of money….again. I have updated drivers, I have gone through the troubleshooting routine several times. I routinely run virus scans daily, use CCleaner, Spybot Search and Destroy, Malwarebytes, Adaware, and AVG, all of which I update every time I run them.

The disks it won’t read or write now, it would read and write no longer than a month ago, so yes, they’re compatible. This Vaio was back for repair for 11 of the 12 months of its warranty. It’s crap, and it has been since they got my $2800 for it. It’s a mistake I will neither forget nor repeat. However, I’m stuck with it until I can afford something better, which would be anything except something made by Sony.

When I try to run a disk, the light lights up, and you can hear it trying to start the disk. Ultimately, though, it will neither read nor write, as I said.

0 votes

ferdinan Sitohang

July 30, 2012

this is what sometimes happen to device. First, your Optical drive is working well, but it cannot read the disc because the disc was burn using a different way that your device could read. Second is your disc is not compatible with the optical disc.

Dee Wheat

It will not read commercially burned (such as manufacturers’ disks for games and such) disks, and it will not read disks that it previously burned. None of my software disks work, either. It is not recognizing that there is a disk in the drive. I know you guys don’ know me, but Aibeck and I have been friends for a long time, since back in the infancy of MUO, if you will. I’m not a newbie, and despite my being old, I’m not technologically inexperienced. My first computer had an amber monitor and transmitted data via a dedicated phone that sat on my desk.After it was transmitted, I printed it and then had to delete those files letter by letter with the backspace key.

I rarely rip covers and muck around inside computers any more, but that’s more because I broke my shoulder and ripped the heck out of the rotator cuff and don’t have a lot of mobility or dexterity remaining on that side.

I’ve pretty well resigned myself to the fact that this drive is toast, but thought I’d toss it out and see if perhaps you youngsters ha a suggestion that I hadn’t thought of.

July 30, 2012
0 votes

ha14

July 30, 2012

if you want to copy files from cd/dvd to hard drive try Isobuster and see if that helps.
http://www.isobuster.com/

also to be sure that the fault is not on the computer but on the cd/dvd try it on another pc.

try this microsoft solution, Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media
http://support.microsoft.com/mats/cd_dvd_drive_problems/

Dee Wheat

Did all of that before I posted. And the fault is not on the disks.

July 30, 2012
0 votes

Alex

July 30, 2012

This is a conspiracy of manufacturers! At the turn of the century, they began to produce equipment that is planned to accelerate dying. For a couple of years of service, users were forced to buy a new one ))

0 votes

Alan Wade

July 30, 2012

Cd/DVD drives are so cheap now why not buy a new one and see how it goes.

Dee Wheat

Cheap is relative. I live on Social Security, and while I live reasonably comfortably because I know how to manage money, anything extra can strain things. Additionally, I’ve ripped apart and replaced or upgraded parts on a lot of desktops over the years I’ve never done it with a laptop and am really reluctant to do it to my only (semi)reliable internet connection. I’d rather do without an optical drive than take a chance on trashing this thing.If I were confident that I could do it and still have the whole thing work when I was done I wouldn’t hesitate, and I know it probably would be fine but…..

July 30, 2012
0 votes

Paul Pruitt

July 30, 2012

I worked for help desk company that specialized in this, it was such a common problem. I think people don’t use their drives too much so manufacturers don’t put a lot of resources into it.

Anyway, you can read the tricks we came up with here:

http://cd-dvd-troubleshooter.com/

Dee Wheat

Paul, thank you. There are several things there that I haven’t tried yet, and will do so today. I’ll let you know how it goes LOL.

July 30, 2012
Dee Wheat

Doing the happy dance here! I downloaded and ran PC Check and got:

Checkup Service returned error:

org.hibernate.exception.GenericJDBCException:
could not insert:[store.Audit Info].

OK, I’m retired, I have time to fiddle with this.

Microsoft Autoplay repair looks interesting. Stuck my Scrabble disk (this was the first disk it refused to read, my brand new ScrabbleSuite, and I dolove my Scrabble!) in the drive and followed the screen, and even though it SAID it couldn’t repair the problem, the drive is now reading fine. Haven’t tried writing yet, but just getting it to read is a huge improvement! I’ll try writing some files in a bit and let you know what happens!

July 30, 2012
Dee Wheat

Now I’m doing the double happy dance! It reads, writes, and plays back! You really can’t fully appreciate just how happy that makes me at the moment! OK, yeah,maybe I don’t have much of a life if that makes me this happy, but….and this, I have found, is a HUGE “but”….I thoroughly enjoy what life I have. Playing expert level Scrabble while listening to the music of Carlos Nakai is a great afternoon!

Thanks for putting up with me,everyone,and Paul,you are at the top of my “Wonderful People” list!

July 30, 2012
Paul Pruitt

Wow, thanks for following up. Kudos don’t like yours come every day :-) . Happy to be of help.

July 31, 2012
0 votes

Janeesh VJ

July 31, 2012

if ur drive is too old buy a new one

Dee Wheat

I don’t need a new one now. Paul gave m some tips that had it up and going again quite readily! Thanks again, Paul!

August 1, 2012