Sony DVD RW DW-D18a - Won't recognise CD audio/games/CDRs

[knightime]

I was wondering if anyone can help with a problem I have run into recently.

I've had my PC now for over a year and, up until about a moth ago, everything was fine.

However my DVD RW has all of a sudden stopped recognising CD media of any kind - it won't play games, play audio cds or recognise a blank CDr.

DVDs pose no problem and the machine even auto detects and auto plays them fine. I can also burn to DVD media ok, so no problems there.

When I put CD media into the drive its almost as if it has a problem 'spinning up' when the media is loaded - its like its trying desperately to spin up but eventually gives up, and after it has finished messing about and I go into my computer and double-click on the DVD RW drive it says, 'the drive is empty'.

I have unloaded any conficting software so that I only have NERO burning ROM. In the hardware control panel it says the device is working properly and the driver is OK. I've tried uninstalling the driver and rebooting so that the computer auto detects new hardware - nothing.

Incidently I put a blank CDr into the drive and ran NEROs 'Drive Tester' utility - it read the disc fine, but when I came to burn on it the machine spat it out and asked me to load 'compatible media'. It did this with several blank CDrs.

I've tried to look for an updated driver on Google - nothing. Sony's website is absolute poo and doesn't even list this hardware, so I can't even check the driver to see if the one I have is corrupted!

Has anyone got any suggestions? I've just about exhausted all my avenues !

[jman98]

DVD drives actually have 2 lasers - one for DVDs and one for CDs. Sounds like your drive may have a problem with the CD laser. If so, it needs to be repaired or replaced. If you can even find a driver on Sony's website, it probably won't help. Going bad after 1 year is a little unusual unless you use the drive an awful lot for ripping.

[knightime]

I didn't realise that at all...looks like a new drive is the only solution! Thanx for the advise!

[aonade]

iv ad a similar problem with my dvd drive just going all of a sudden. It auto reads a dvd and trys to play it when i put one in however if i put a blank dvd into the drive i get an error message. My computer also refuses to read or any portable device i put in my computer so i cant put anything on to a flash drive either.
The last time it let me read a portable device i was transfering 600 ish song on to my mp3. However only 63 songs were copied and some of the songs are severly distorted. anyone knw how i can fix this?