CDROM went bye bye

[nikoli]

Hey guys... got a dell inspiron laptop. This is the weirdest thing. I'm
'fixing' it for a friend (she got a virus). I wiped the HD clean and
reloaded a fresh copy of XP pro... I even loaded suse linux 9.1 just for
kicks. It was working perfectly. So I packed it up with the intention of
bringing it back. Only she wasn't home so I came back home and plugged
it in just to surf and listen to some tunes. Now for some crazy reason
the darn CDROM doesn't work! I checked the BIOS and it doesn't even see
that it's there! Obviously neither windows or linux see it either. (Now
I feel like a complete dork because I told her I have it working.)
There's a panel underneath the CDROM for connections and it looks and
feels like everything is snug. There's also power going to the drive
because the LCD lights and it spins up when a CD is inserted. I have no
clue what could've happened between my house and hers.

 

[michel]

I have no clue what could've happened between my house and hers.

Uhm... the CDROM could have died.

 

[Tool]

Is it one of those slot load ones that just pops right out? or is it
fixed in place. I may be confused between the inspiron and latitude.
Just maybe remove it and put it back in if you feel comfortable doing
that and make sure there isn't a ton of dust around/in the
connection. I don't know what else to tell you.. good luck man, I
know exactly how you feel.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Hey guys... got a dell inspiron laptop. This is the weirdest thing. I'm
'fixing' it for a friend (she got a virus). I wiped the HD clean and
reloaded a fresh copy of XP pro... I even loaded suse linux 9.1 just for
kicks. It was working perfectly. So I packed it up with the intention of
bringing it back. Only she wasn't home so I came back home and plugged
it in just to surf and listen to some tunes. Now for some crazy reason
the darn CDROM doesn't work! I checked the BIOS and it doesn't even see
that it's there! Obviously neither windows or linux see it either. (Now
I feel like a complete dork because I told her I have it working.)
There's a panel underneath the CDROM for connections and it looks and
feels like everything is snug. There's also power going to the drive
because the LCD lights and it spins up when a CD is inserted. I have no
clue what could've happened between my house and hers.

IS it an LG CDROM? There was is a bug in LG CDROMs where they used a
standard IDE register to control the FLASH RAM in the drive.
The driver in Mandrake 9.2 touched that register which wipes out the FLASH
RAM in the CDROM. I don't know if SUSE 9.1 uses the same driver (I doubt
it because SUSE 9.1 was released much more recently then Mandrake 9.2) but
if it does then that could be what happened. Checked the Dell website they
might have a utility which can restore the CDROM's FLASH RAM.

 

[Richard Hammond]

Hey guys... got a dell inspiron laptop. This is the weirdest thing. I'm
'fixing' it for a friend (she got a virus). I wiped the HD clean and
reloaded a fresh copy of XP pro... I even loaded suse linux 9.1 just for
kicks. It was working perfectly. So I packed it up with the intention of
bringing it back. Only she wasn't home so I came back home and plugged
it in just to surf and listen to some tunes. Now for some crazy reason
the darn CDROM doesn't work! I checked the BIOS and it doesn't even see
that it's there! Obviously neither windows or linux see it either. (Now
I feel like a complete dork because I told her I have it working.)
There's a panel underneath the CDROM for connections and it looks and
feels like everything is snug. There's also power going to the drive
because the LCD lights and it spins up when a CD is inserted. I have no
clue what could've happened between my house and hers.

Is the CD rom on a different IDE channel to everything else (secondary
instead of primary for example). Check for an option in the BIOS somewhere
to enable both,
Rich

 

[nikoli]

Is it one of those slot load ones that just pops right out? or is it
fixed in place. I may be confused between the inspiron and latitude.
Just maybe remove it and put it back in if you feel comfortable doing
that and make sure there isn't a ton of dust around/in the
connection. I don't know what else to tell you.. good luck man, I
know exactly how you feel.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware troubleshooting newsgroups.

It's fixed in place. There's just a little panel underneath the drive to
access the cables. Everything appears and feels snug and seated.

 

[nikoli]

IS it an LG CDROM? There was is a bug in LG CDROMs where they used a
standard IDE register to control the FLASH RAM in the drive.
The driver in Mandrake 9.2 touched that register which wipes out the FLASH
RAM in the CDROM. I don't know if SUSE 9.1 uses the same driver (I doubt
it because SUSE 9.1 was released much more recently then Mandrake 9.2) but
if it does then that could be what happened. Checked the Dell website they
might have a utility which can restore the CDROM's FLASH RAM.

Honestly, I don't know if it's an LG CDROM or not. I can tell you that
after I loaded SUSE it didn't cause any problems with XP. The CDROM
worked after the install in both SUSE and XP.

 

[nikoli]

Is the CD rom on a different IDE channel to everything else (secondary
instead of primary for example). Check for an option in the BIOS somewhere
to enable both,
Rich

I have no idea how the cables are set up. This is a laptop. I don't
really feel comfortable opening it up to find out either. And there is
no such setting in the BIOS :^(

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Honestly, I don't know if it's an LG CDROM or not. I can tell you that
after I loaded SUSE it didn't cause any problems with XP. The CDROM
worked after the install in both SUSE and XP.

If it had been the LG problem it would have gotten fried during the
install, since it was working after you did the install thats not the
problem.

The CDROMs on Inspirons snap in and out, try slideing it out and then
snapping it back in. It could be as simple as the drive coming loose.

 

[nikoli]

The CDROMs on Inspirons snap in and out, try slideing it out and then
snapping it back in. It could be as simple as the drive coming loose.

Are you sure they snap in and out? Do I have to take the panel on the
bottom off to take the drive out?

 

[nikoli]

If it had been the LG problem it would have gotten fried during the
install, since it was working after you did the install thats not the
problem.

The CDROMs on Inspirons snap in and out, try slideing it out and then
snapping it back in. It could be as simple as the drive coming loose.

Nevermind my last post... snaped it out and put it back in and it's
working again. Man that was scary. I thought I was in for it ;^)

thanks for the help!!!

 

[nikoli]

Turned out that it was just loose. Thanks for the help everyone!