DVD Drive not working properly

[Razorsidewalk]

Recently i have had trouble with my DVD drive. For some reason without any error messages etc it wont (or 90% of the time) load and DVDs on the drive.

I put any dvd in the drive, (whether it be a PC game, blank dvd, or music dvd) and the it just wont load anymore. The disk just spins and thats it. Or sometimes it spins and u get this tick tick tick noise form the drive itself.

Not sure why this has happened, the dvd drive itself is only about a year old and it worked fine from the beginning but in the last month or so it just stopped loading dvds. On the odd occasion i might be able to get the drive to pick up a disk, but sometime when that happens i have been there for like 45 mins loading the disk and ejecting the disk till it loads it self.

Can anyone help please cos i cant use any DVD atm on my PC.

[cauzomb]

There might be a piece of dust on or below the lens. The noise is probly the lens assembly trying to gain focus, or ressetting the head to find the beginning track, worst case is the noise could be from the head drive tooth skipping on the worm drive gear. What model drive?

[Razorsidewalk]

The model is LITE-ON DVDRW SHW-160P6S

[cauzomb]

Don't want to send you hunting for help from liteon if your waranty is up, that model has a 1 year factory waranty, if you are in that time, try contacting them for repair/service.. http://us.liteonit.com/us/index.php?...per&Itemid=185 Unless you bought an in-store extended waranty, then you'd want to go to the store that you bought it at. If the waranty is up, try popping the lid off the drive and using a bulb blower to take care of any dust; if there's any junk on the lens, use a small drip of alcohol on a clean Q-tip, or other cotton swab;lens tissue type cleaner to swirl around gently "very gently" then switch to dry swab/tissue, gently breath some steam onto the surface, then swirl the dry swab till there's no streak marks from the cleaner or your breath steam.

Look closely at the lens "with the power off"
Check for any clouding of the lens material; some are just cast optical plastic with some kinda hard coating, if it looks dull or cloudy, try polishing it off with some mothers brand mirror glaze paint polish; on a corner of some drive packing foam, more like those large bubble foam drive inserts, may take a while to get the cloudyness out, but this works on xbox360 dvd roms.. Here's a link to some 360 dvdrom cleaning vids;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GLS1dndQLU


If your not up to cleaning, and out of waranty, looking to get another drive; I'm pretty happy with my Toshiba, so that's what I'd recommend; unless you need specific model/firmware version for dvd media/backup compatability.

[Razorsidewalk]

Ok, i'll give that a go and see how it goes. I'll let u know wat the outcome is

Thnx

Razor

[cauzomb]

OK, forgot to mention; when I say pop the top off, I mean take it apart, rather than trying to actually pop the top... You'd need a screw driver, most likely a phillips.