Weird DVD/CD-ROM drive issue

So, I reformatted my laptop. Asus G74SX. Now the dvd-rom drive doesn't work. It shows up on the device manager, it shows as installed properly, but if I put in any type of media it doesn't read it. I've searched high and low. I have read lots of suggestions on making registry changes except that the changes being suggested don't even exist within my registry. The main problem it seems is that the specific driver I'm looking for is missing from the Asus website. I know there are some really knowledgeable computer people around here so suggestions would be appreciated.

hl-dt-st dvdram gt34n

I even went to LG's website. The dvd-rom is a hitachi-lg rom drive. I couldn't find the model that matches mine to download a driver.

I've reformatted twice now.

I'm at a loss. I need to reinstall all my programs. Including Reason. I want to make tracks.

My only suggestion would be to install Ubuntu (as dual-boot, with Ubuntu's wubi installer) and see if it works under that OS. If it does, at least you know it's not a hardware issue.

  On 2/11/2014 at 11:00 PM, IOS said:

My only suggestion would be to install Ubuntu (as dual-boot, with Ubuntu's wubi installer) and see if it works under that OS. If it does, at least you know it's not a hardware issue.

Ugh, that seems like a lot of work. I feel like it would have to be the most coincidental hardware issue for it to have stopped working immediately when I reformatted. It was working fine before that. I think it's a driver issue completely, but I am having trouble finding the proper driver. I'm thinking there might be a driver that is related which will also work or another program that could be installed which would fix the issue.

You never know with drives on Asus laptops though. They're pretty notorious for being the first thing to fail. Mine gradually stopped supporting various types of media and now it can't read anymore, only burn certain types of DVD media. Ridiculous!

Yes sometimes it can be a coincidence. I thought Win8 had buggered my BD-DVD drive when upgrading from Win7, but it turns out the drive is really really fickle and just needed a clean with a disc cleaner.

You could maybe try uninstalling the driver in device manager, restarting the system and see if it correctly installs the driver the second time. It might have got all confused finding everything in one go...

(BTW - How did you reinstall everything post format. Was it a recovery partition, of did you use a CD. If the latter then .... well that'll just confuse my brain !)

  On 2/12/2014 at 12:04 AM, mcbpete said:

Yes sometimes it can be a coincidence. I thought Win8 had buggered my BD-DVD drive when upgrading from Win7, but it turns out the drive is really really fickle and just needed a clean with a disc cleaner.

 

You could maybe try uninstalling the driver in device manager, restarting the system and see if it correctly installs the driver the second time. It might have got all confused finding everything in one go...

 

(BTW - How did you reinstall everything post format. Was it a recovery partition, of did you use a CD. If the latter then .... well that'll just confuse my brain !)

Yeah, I unistalled it, and restarted and it was just there. I need to try it again to make sure something weird didn't happen. I was attempting the process you described, but it didn't work properly. I'll try it again.

i used a reformat partition.

If the driver is missing on the website and this is a driver-issue, there's still another way of looking for it (you might have already tried that though...) - every device has a hardware-ID, some long-ish bit of code that is a universal specification for this device only, you can find that in your device manager. sometimes googling for that ID (+"driver") can lead you to places where the driver has been re-uploaded that don't even mention the brand name of the thing otherwise.

Make sure the site looks safe and legit though before you download and install, should you find anything.

  On 2/12/2014 at 1:22 AM, Terpentintollwut said:

If the driver is missing on the website and this is a driver-issue, there's still another way of looking for it (you might have already tried that though...) - every device has a hardware-ID, some long-ish bit of code that is a universal specification for this device only, you can find that in your device manager. sometimes googling for that ID (+"driver") can lead you to places where the driver has been re-uploaded that don't even mention the brand name of the thing otherwise.

Make sure the site looks safe and legit though before you download and install, should you find anything.

Yeah, sort of the issue searching for drivers innit? Loads of spam/malware out there.

I'll update with my results from these suggestions.

you guys still use disc drives?

  On 2/13/2014 at 3:51 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

you guys still use disc drives?

Really only for installing things that happen to be on a disc. Which is not that often. But also burning cd's for my car. I got a FM transmitter to hold me over for a while until I get my aux conversion kit. It is actually pretty decent FM transmitter and it only cost 40 bucks.

So, I cleaned the disk and the drive off including the little eye, and it worked. I guess the behavior of the drive was making me think it was driver related. Turns out it was just dirty. Lel