I was using an looking over the contents of an old PCGamer CDROM, didn't find what I was looking for(apparently I had the wrong CD, but whatever, no big deal), so I ejected it. When I hit the eject button again, to get the tray back in, it didn't do anything, it just sat there and blinked its light (but the blink frequency was slower than when it reads data). After several attempts of getting it to respond(also doing stuff thru Windows, like right-clicking on the drive icon in My Computer, but to no avail) and after countless hours, I decided to gently push it in manually. Nothing, just more blinking. I did a manual eject (with a paper clip), put a CD in, and pushed it in again; maybe it'd read that I had a CD in? Nope. It didn't register and kept blinking the same way, however I could faintly hear that the CD was spinning! And the drive was quite warm after I shut down and took the drive out to check it. I'm guessing that it might be that possibly the firmware is confused somehow, but the drive didn't come with any documentation telling what kind of error the blinking may mean! It's an Artec 16x DVDROM; also, the Artec website didn't even have documentation for it, just for their scanners! Good news is that there's a firmware update for it on the site, so I'm going to try that. I'd appreciate any ideas. Thanks. "Use da schwartz"

How old is the DVD drive? It may need to be replaced. DVD cookers are pretty cheap right now.

It's maybe 1 or 2 years old... The reason I got it was because my parents' DVD player has TVG and I can't see stuff I wanna see like The Punisher with them anyways. And it was $20. I'm looking at an AOpen DVD+-RW combo drive for $30 on Pricewatch.com. I looked at some reviews, it sounds good. here's a site I looked at: http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h382.htm what'd ya think? Thanks for following up "Use da schwartz"

I get the $30 unit. That's a pretty good price.

I have an Artec 16X DVD & haven't had any problems with it. Even though it sounds like a bad drive & it had be working OK with the way you have it setup, double check the IDE configuration...don't have it on the same cable with another optical drive & don't use the cable select jumper setting ASUS A7N8X-X Athlon XP 1800+ 8.5 x 200MHz 1024MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7 Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB WinME/WinXP Pro SP2

Yeah Jam, I checked the IDE config and it looks intact: plugged in securely, no damaged cables. I have it setup like you suggest, jumpers set to master and plugged into the secondary IDE slot on the mobo, and it's the only device on its IDE cable. On the POST screen, where it displays IDE devices, it registers ok, and in "system" properties on the control panel, it says it's working properly. That is until now. I went to Artec's firmware update website: http://www.artecusa.com/tech-support-firmware.html and downloaded the firmaware update for DVD-ROM 16x model DHM-G48 because that's the model no. on my drive, obviously. The zip file contained 3 files: An exe: "ArtecDHM.exe" A dos batch file: "G48-DHM.bat" And a .hex file: "G48V297.hex" First, I ran the exe. It opened an MSDOS prompt window and rattled off something including hex code (which I recognized from viewing the .hex file in notepad), then it "finished" letting me close the window. I didn't write down what it said because I didn't see it as an error. There was nothing noticably different about the drive, it just kept blinking and not responding. Then I opened the .bat file. It opened an MSDOS prompt window and said that it was flashing the firmware, which I thought was a good thing. The bottom line in it's message had this: "Erasing: 25%" Except that the % was progressive(going from 0 to 100 percent). However, it only got to 25%, then seemed froze the computer. After giving it about 30min to resolve it's problems("I dunno, maybe it was just taking its merry time?" I thought to myself), I tried ctrl+alt+del a couple of times, after which it came back with the dreaded blue screen, saying the system was busy. But it was genuinely frozen. So I manually restarted. During the "Detecting IDE devices" step in POST, it stopped dead in its tracks and couldn't find my drives! It wouldn't even let my enter setup, even before the detection step! Arg! I have a feeling the .bat file erased my bios instead of my DVD drive! Help! This is the WORST thing that has happened to my PC! I just hope my HD contents are OK... "Use da schwartz"

Reset your BIOS to default using the jumper if you have one or removing the MOBO battery for a few minutes.