I have a Sony DVD RW DW-Q120A drive. Windows XP (SP2) Recognized it as that model and installed the drivers cdrom.sys, imapi.sys, redbook.sys, storprop.dll

It has the firmware out of the box PYS1 I assume? (I do not how to check it.)

It plays Movie DVDs and DVD-Roms just fine. It even read CD-RW data discs I wrote myself on my CyberDrive CW088D. It will not my Play Audio CDs or my older CD-Rom games discs I tried about 15 discs and it does the same thing everytime. The drive starts to spin up makes a clicking noise and slows down, then repeats the same cycle again over and over and over.

Does this drive not read this type of Disc? It has the "compact disc" icon on the box.

Do I need to upgrade the firmware? I saw lots of possible choices on this forum and don't know what is the latest/best for this model drive. PV96WIN.EXE PYS2WIN.EXE or something else?

Is it possible the drive is defective? It will read DVDs does it use a seperate head to read CDs and that is whats making the click noise?

I just want to be able to put CDs into my Drive and have them work

I can always put my CyberDrive CW088D drive from my old computer into this one but I would really like to get my current drive to work.

I also had "Starforce" on my system. I found a site about Starforce and they had instructions to see if you have it on your system. They also have a utility to remove it. http://www.glop.org/starforce/
It sucessfully removed starforce, even removes the files from windows registry. It didn't help I am still having the same trouble reading CDs.

Any advice is appreciated, I'm not very good at hardware.

Thank You

So I put another drive into my machine that I bought a while back but never ended up using. a Sony DVD-ROM DDU1632 and the CD-ROMs work just fine in it. Apparently the clicking noise in the DW-Q120A was just a mechanical failure? It must have 2 laser heads in it I guess?

Anyways this drive works but is slower and makes a lot of noise plus another drive for the Power Supply to power but I guess it works for CDs.

Hi,

please get a bootable CD and try booting your computer with that CD and your DVDRW drive. You may have to adjust the boot options in your BIOS setup to do so.
If that fails, too, then the drive is probably defective and you should return it if there is some warranty.
Latest official firmware for that drive can be obtained from www.sonyisstorage.com - as your drive might be serviced under warranty, I would strongly recommend not to install any other (inofficial) firmware.

Michael

How do you get from PV96 back to PSY2 . Everytime I run PYS2WIN.EXE it does not find the drive. It went to PSY2 fine the first time, and PV96 also found the drive but it called it a Lite-On drive. PSY2 will only look for a sony drive . I changed the bios to boot from that drive first and it would not, I think it is a defective drive and its only about 4 months old.

You need a patched version that has hardware check disabled. There is a big Firmware thread, there will also be some patched Sony stock firmware ot its Liteon equivalent for your drive.
That's right. You have flashed inofficial Liteon test firmware to your drive. To revert to any official firmware - Liteon or Sony - you need a patched firmware without hardware check.
Your warranty is gone anyway.
Yes. in that case the drive seems to be defective. But as you voided your warranty, these are your options: Leave the drive as is, revert to Sony firmware or switch to Liteon official firmware, use as doorstop, just as you like. I'd prefer going the Liteon path.

Michael

Thank you I installed the factory firmware back onto the drive and returning the drive to Ibuypower.com I let them know I was changing the firmware in an attempt to repair the drive myself and it was no problem. They told me to remove the drive myself and ship it to them. No need to send the whole computer, very cool!

They are also shipping me a new drive (I have to say I'm impressed with their customer support.) free of charge. The computer came with a 3 year warranty standard! When It arrives and I put it in I'll let you know how it goes for somebody else who might be having this problem as well

The tech at Ibuypower.com also believed it to be a defective drive after I described the symptoms and all steps I attempted to remedy it.

Thank you very much for the Help