About a month ago, somehow my DVD-RW drive stopped working. The drive is a Lightscribe burner, and I first noticed the problem when it failed to read a blank Lightscribe CD-R. Since then, the drive no longer reads any sort of CDs or DVDs, and when I put any type of media into the drive (be it blank CDs,DVDs, or any type of software), the drive doesn't even spin up, all it does it blink for 3 seconds and then seems to do nothing. The drive is recognized by Windows and has no problems under Device Manager, yet I go to My Computer and I get the message "Please insert a disc into drive E:" The computer is an HP Pavillion a1230n, and it is only 2 months old, and the drive worked perfectly for over a month. I have looked all over the internet for solution, have tried a different IDE cable, and nothing seems to work. The strange thing is, the CD-ROM drive right below the DVD-RW drive works perfectly. The DVD-RW is a "TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H552L". My question is, how can I test to see if this is a hardware of software problem, and how might I be able to fix the drive? I wanted to know if this might have something to do with the problem: my hard drive is Maxtor SATA, yet in Device Manager under what normally should say IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, it says "unknown". When I go to look under this, there is no SATA, and the hard drive is considered the primary IDE Channel?? It is also strange because the CD and DVD-RW drives are also under the Primary IDE Channel when they are not even connected to the hard drive. How is the HD consider an IDE Controller if it is an SATA drive? (I have attached an image showing this in Device Manager)

Try this. If you are comfortable editing the registry: Create a Restore point and back up the registry.Open regedit. Look for; HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\CurrentControlSet\SetControlClass. Key name: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Value Data:[Delete all value data from upper and lower filters] Note-Do not delete the key or the multi-string values. Delete only the data values. The keys may be in more than 1 place. You will have to search for them. Exit regedit and reboot. http://computervitals.com/

I would go into the Device Manager and delete all those unknowns. Reboot and see if windows fill fix some of those problems. My 'feeling' is that it doesn't have anything to do with the DVD drive problem. My guess is that the drive has died. Do yourself a favor BACKUP! Sorry, I do not check for private messages

per, after opening the registry, I could not find "SetControlClass" after going into "CurrentControlSet". ham30, is it safe to just delete all of those under "unknown"? Just in case, would making a restore point be a good idea? Thanks for the help.

It's perfectly safe. Windows will search his backup drivers and restore anything that it can. I wouldn't bother making a restore point. Do yourself a favor BACKUP! Sorry, I do not check for private messages

Well, deleting them did nothing and they just came right back as unknown. My question is, if I get a new drive, wouldn't it just come back listed as an unknown IDE controller? Any idea as to why all of the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers are listed as unknown?

That is a very confusing problem. I've never run into anything like that. If it was me, I think I would use the HP 'restore' software or maybe contact HP tech support to see if they have any ideas. Do yourself a favor BACKUP! Sorry, I do not check for private messages