Advice on replacing Toshiba L655 laptop DVD burner

hanaleia

Posts: 35   +0
HI all, The DVD-RW drive in our Toshiba L655d-S5159 seems to have gone caput. We have only had it a year but it does get used alot.
It will only read some of our dvds now , other DVD's it refuses to even recognize the format or says media is unreadable even though there is no visible damage to the disk. I have run malwarebytes,superantispyware, ccleaner,spybot s&d, avast, microsoft online seurity scanner, and hijackthis with no results other than spyware.
Device manager says it is working fine. I uninstalled from device manager and rebooted. Same thing. Could not find updated drivers for it.
Microsoft Fixit say media is unreadable or unknown format but the disk plays fine in our other Toshiba L505. Some movies start right up in VLC other dvds cannot be read. Some of our burnt movie backups work great while the original dvd cant even be "read" It burns just fine and every cd we put in so far reads fine. Dont think it is codecs issue cause an older original StarWars DVD wont read at all in it. If a game is put in it can read it but the autorun does not start up.I check autoplay and it says to load game or for DVDs play with VLC.
I edited the registry to get rid of the filters(there was only an upper) this did not really help. When any disk is inserted the drive really thinks long and hard about it all this leading me to the conclusion that we need a new disk drive.
Toshiba has been remarkably unhelpful saying our warranty expired 3 weeks ago.
After saying all that, my question is this, does anyone know if any laptop DVD-RW drive will be compatible or if laptop drives come in different sizes. I have replaced laptop hard drives before but never a dvd drive. I am going to have to take the old one out to find out if it is SATA or IDE. I am hesitant to order one since I cant seem to find one that says it will specifically fit an L655. Thanks any advice is appreciated and sorry for the lengthiness.
 
The Optical drive is held in by one screw, usually located under a bottom cover. Open the tray and when you remove that screw, just pull the drive out. There should be a part number on the drive label. Use this number to locate a replacement drive. The drive's plastic bezel can be removed and placed on the replacement drive, so you can purchase a much cheaper drive that doesn't have a bezel installed. EBay is a good source
 
Thanks Tmagic650, that was surprisingly easy, worked like a charm. I appreciate you taking the time. Super advice about the bezel too. Cant wait to put the new one in. Thanks again.
 
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