What the hell?

[hwango]

My DVD drive (DVD+/-RW NEC ND-3550A) has gone flaky. It will still play DVDs, but if I put in a music or data CD it just spins for a while and won't recognize that there's anything on it. For that matter, I just tried to burn a CD to see if that would jolt things in to functionality, and it won't recognize that there's a CD in there at all. Any thoughts from the tech savvy people among you on how to fix this problem, or did half of the functionality of my drive just die on me?

Comments

[octophobic.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what's wrong with it. I would suggest going to the manufacturer's site and looking at their FAQs and seeing if they have any updated drivers.

This is the drive you just got recently? It may be under some sort of warranty.

You could possibly upgrade your power supply so that you can also run one of the CD drives you have in the computer.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's the one from March. If I understand the newegg warranty policy correctly, I might be able to return it for a replacement. I'm a little fuzzy on that, and would have to call them. I guess I'll talk to them after I talk to NEC.

[qedrakmar.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a hardware or maybe firmware problem... I can't see drivers affecting it like that. You may, however, consider spending the 5 bucks on a cleaning disk at Radio Shack. ;)

[hwango.livejournal.com]

Really? Does it use a completely different laser to read DVDs then, because it still reads those just fine. That's the part I find so baffling. I may as well give the CD cleaner a try, though. NEC's customer support is a joke, so far. The phone number for customer service never picks up (not even to a machine of some kind), and several of the support-related links on their website lead me to "403, Not Authorized." We'll see if email works any better, but I seriously doubt it.