Optical Drive won't read, makes strange noises.

I have an Alienware Sentia m3200. My optical drive is not working. If I insert a disc, I get the gruntish things every second or so, but the discs never show up. (See the wav file) If I was stingy on the info and specs, please ask for more info.

Any ideas?

Try a new ide cable, if that doesn`t help, uninstall the drive from your device manager and reboot your computer. Windows will redetect the drive.


If it`s still no go, your drive may have died on you and a replacement may be necessary.

Regards Howard

When your optical drive starts making weird noises and doesnt work, you might as well break out the butter, cause your drive is toast.

It works, oddly only with DVDs.

I tried Matrix in the drive. It plays. Now my Palm Desktop CD is a different story.

This is the Slimtype DVDRW SOS-W833S in a laptop. I'm afraid of firmware but I will update if necessary. I've also noticed that this model is very eratic in Acer laptops, however, this an Alienware and I haven't found any reports. Again, any ideas?

The noises are only with the CDs. DVDs are all fine. Even burning. I just burned the Vista DVD.

Then the noises are probably rhe Cd laser assembly which has gone bad.

I don't understand. So there are 2 lasers, one for the CD and one for the DVD?

Yes DVDRW drives have two lasers, one for Cd and the other for DVD.

Grrr.... Well, to get a replacement.

Thanks very much, I guess money will have to be shelled out.

Can I buy any optical drive with a 50 pin IDE that's left side fixed? Slim too, I assume.