Please help. I have a 6 month old Sony Vaio XP Professional laptop with a SONY DVD RW DW-Q58A UFS2 (ATA). Three times now the CD portion of the drive has failed (luckily for me I'm still under warranty and Sony has replaced 2 free of charge). By failed I mean can no longer read or write data or music CDs. When I insert a CD into the drive a lot of clicking takes place but it eventually stops without media recognition. DVDs work fine (reading and writing).

I find it very difficult to believe that three brand new drives would have failed with the same problem and am starting to think my problems may be software related. I've done some hunting around on the web and it appears I moght have some lethal combo of hardware/software, unfortunately I am not savvy enough to figure out how to resolve. The software I'm using is Nero 7, DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink and sometimes Windows Media Player.

Each time the CD portion of the drive has failed has been after successfully completing several burns. Then all of a sudden one burn will fail and repeated attempts to get it to successfully complete somehow kill the device. An interesting and seemingly related side affect is that once the device dies it negatively affects the overall quality of the sounds coming out of the laptop. Even the simple Windows logon sounds come out distorted.

I've tried removing some upper and lower registry entries I've read about, but that didn't help. I've read a bit about firmware, but again lack the necessary expertise to decipher what I've read. Before asking Sony to provide yet a third replacement device, I thought I'd see if anyone "out there" could help.

if hardware is going to fail there's nothing you can do, i don't see what's wrong with your software programs, i bet you a lot of ppl will have them installed.

ask sony to replace it and & ask them for an extended warrenty as your getting well pissed off with it and you feel like throwing it back at them, or try to get your laptop exchanged (how old is it ?).


& welcome to the forums

Thanks for the reply. Definitely will ask Sony for yet another CD/DVD device but wanted to try this route first. It just seems that the odds would be against 3 (CD/DVD devices failing in less than 2 months. In addition to CD/DVD device Sony also replaced motherboard and hard drive the last time CD/DVD was replaced. Symptoms are exactly the same and as I mentioned, the device attempts to read CDs when they are in placed the tray -- remember, the clicking sounds -- but it can't.

Yes, DVD-writers have a nasty habit of doing this (CD or DVD part dying), even brand new out-of-the-box Plextors do it !

I don't see how your software can wreck a drive and updating the firmware won't solve this problem either.

When you say "successfully completing several burns", you're not doing them one after the other are you, because heat can be a problem with laptops. Does the sound get back to normal after a while? Weird, maybe the sound chip is overheating too.

Hi, yes, was burning one after another. No, sound does not get back to normal after a while. Can't believe the same problem has happened with 4 separate CD/DVD drives. Odds seem astronomically against.

That’s nothing unusual for Sony drives, it’s happened to me as well and the drives kept dieing one after the other. In most cases Sony won’t give you any extension on the warranty. The warranty for all the replacement drives will start from the date you buy the first drive, so for any replacement drives they don’t give you the full 12 months. The last replacement drive only lasted about 2 months or so but because it was 12 months after I brought the original drive they wouldn’t replace it.

YIKES!!!! That's not at all what I want to hear, but I guess it is good to know.l What did you finally end up doing with your laptop?

probably buying a different brand of dvd-rw and installing it

Sold it and brought a Toshiba and I have to say been very happy with it! I learnt a very good lesson. Never again to buy anything with Sony on it. Even after I wrote them a few letters about all the problems I was having they never even once replied.

I too, unfortunately, have arrived at the same conclusion. Not only will I never again purchase anything Sony, I'm telling anyone who'll listen to do the same! Finally gave up trying to fix the problem. Sony is dispatching new drive asap. Probably another worthless P.O.S.!!

Thanks for the reply!

I been doing the same thing even since I had the problem with Sony. Even at work we have stopped buying any Sony products.