So, I fancy myself to be somewhat of a computer tech guy, but this is just mind boggling...

I have the Sony DRU- 510A CD/DVD burner on a windows xp machine w/ 1GB RAM, 400GB storage, and a 2.8 GHz processor. I have had it for several years now without any problems... but all of a sudden the burner stopped working entirely. it won't open or close when i push the eject button and the indicator light on the front is flashing rapidly.

Windows knows the drive is there but will not read anything that i put into it. I have had to resort to opening it and closing it by doing it manually. The drive shows up as working properly in every setting dialouge and in device manager

I have tried the following:
1. rebooting
2. Shutting down and disconnecting the power on the drive then rebooting.
3. plugging the power back into it and restarting
4. uninstalling (windows didn't seem to think that it had a DVD drive that was not installed after i rebooted.
5. performed system restore to get the drive reinstalled and to go back to a time that i knew the drive worked.

but alas, for all of my effort, it still rapidly flashes and will not open and close when i push the button, nor will it acknowlege any cd or dvd disk that i put into it.

Windows knows the drive is there but will not read anything that i put into it.

how do you put things in if it doesnt open?

also, when you press the eject button do you hear the motor spinning?

when you uninstalled it did you let xp install it through its "found new hardware" wizard or re-installed it manualy from disk?

in order to put disks in it, i would have to push a paper clip into the pin hole in the front of the drive.

the motor does not spin

and windows did not recognize new hardware and the disk is whoknowswhere, I had to "reinstall" it by rolling back to a restore point

sounds to me like it's decieded it's had enough and gone to that great PC junk yard in the sky......any chance you can borrow another one to test in your PC? but it does really sound like to got to go and buy a new one, i'm sorry to say.....

Originally Posted by Sprocket

sounds to me like it's decieded it's had enough and gone to that great PC junk yard in the sky......

i was afraid of that... but burners aren't that expensive anymore so, i guess that i'll just have to bite the bullet and get a new one.

afraid it sounds like it, just before you buy a new one, i would try a diferent power lead just in case its that that has broken