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PaulJBis
12th November 2004, 19:35
Hi all:

I have a Toshiba SD-M1502 DVD-ROM, which suddenly has stopped reading CDs: when I put one in, it will start spinning trying to read it, but eventually the light will just stay on, and Windows XP will say that it can't read the contents of the disc (the filesystem is not compatible with Windows, or something like that). However, it can read DVDs, both movies and DVD-R data discs.

I've searched in Google, and the consensus is that it's a hardware problem (the laser used for reading CDs is different than the one for reading DVDs, and it's failing). My question is: could it be *anything* else? I just want to make sure before I write off this drive and go out to buy another.

FWIW, I have *not* upgraded the firmware recently; I did it a couple of years ago, to make it region free, but it's been working since and it only stopped working two days ago. I haven't touched anything in Windows XP (install new software, hardware, etc.) either.

alexnoe
21st November 2004, 12:22
The light staying on means that it doesn't detect the disc. The same happens when you insert CDs which are damaged by applying a protection against replay. It does happen with really bad CD-R media (like Digital Storage Technology), but if you encounter that problem with different CD-R, then the drive is probably broken.