I just recently received a used laptop, and it has a Matshita UJ-830s DVD-ram drive in it. I'm not terribly familiar with it, but the guy who gave it to me assured me that it worked fine for him, but I can't get it to recognize ANY disk. No DVD, whether a movie or a burned disk, manufactured DVD, anything. The drive is present in the device manager, just doesn't recognize any disk.

I've still got a few days before the 'return' option runs out, and I need to know if this is fixable, or if it's something simple I'm missing, or something seriously wrong.

Thanks!

Support Information:
Device Type: CD / DVD
Manufacturer: Matsushita (Matshita Panasonic)
Model: DVD-RAM UJ-830s
Interface: IDE
Operating System: Windows XP Professional
Age of Device: < 2 years old
FCCID:

Type of drive: dvd-r/cd-rw (dvd burner, dvd reader, &amp; cd burner combo)
Location: internal
What recording software are you using?: Nero/version

Find it on DriverGuide (http://members.driverguide.com/index.php?action=srch&sm=b&aax=&qa6=630&qa5=3&qa7=1500&dp=2&qm0=DVD-RAM+UJ-830s&jmd=and&fzz=d) | Find it with Google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Matsushita+%28Matshita+Panasonic%29+CD+%2F+DVD++ DVD-RAM+UJ-830s+Windows+XP+Professional+) | Research manufacturer Matsushita (Matshita Panasonic) (http://members.driverguide.com/index.php?action=getinfo&companyid=630)

Matsushita UJ-xxx drives are notorious for going bad. I've seen new ones fail within an hour of usage. If the drive is listed in My Computer and Device Manager and is not flagged in Device Manager as having a problem, then it's most likely a bad drive. If the guy gave it to you, why is there a return option? You're not out anything if he gave it to you so depending on how new it is, would determine whether it should be chunked or not... if it's a newer drive, it's definitely worth spending what a replacement drive would cost.

Ok, that's what I was afraid of. I traded him for it, and other than the DVD drive, it's a pretty good computer, and does what I need it to do. I'll probably just pick up an external drive to use with it. I don't need a DVD drive that bad on the laptop, my desktop works fine, and I can xfer stuff over the network to it.

another thing you could try is find an identical laptop with the same drive and use the 2nd unit to try in your machine. If it works then you know it a bad drive. Or you might could get a pc shop to test it for you for a minimal charge. New replacement drives are not that expensive and can be found on eBay for a fraction of the cost from the pc vendor.

Thank you for the advice. I might try that as well. I have done some reading on this, and I can see the massive numbers of issues with Matshita drives. Like I said before, I don't mind not having the drive functioning right now, since I don't really 'need' it for what I need the computer for, but perhaps when I have some time, I might try to get a friend who can do some deeper diagnostics than I can on it.

Thank you!