BleepingComputer.com: Bad DVD drive?

Ok guys, I think I know the answer to this one buuut want a second opinion before I try anything. I recently purchased a samsung DVDRW burner with light scribe for my computer. it is a SATA II drive. It worked wonders the first couple days, then started giving me BSoDs on windows boot. every time, at the same point. Would occasionally get into windows, but then it was only a matter of time before it would BSoD on me again. Now, Ubuntu, loads up fine-no problem whatsoever, so I figure, driver problem, so I reinstalled the chipset drivers and the video card drivers, but nothing changed. I then rolled back the video card driver, and my display driver started giving me fits, which told me that I somehow messed my registry up. I then decided to go ahead and reformat the HD (ive been thinking about doing that for awhile now anyway, I didnt like the current partitioning system) First time it booted up from DVD, it BSoDed on me, second time I had the windows disk boot up with bootlogging, and it got on fine, installed everything perfect, no issues. now that everythings installed, I restart the computer for updates, got the BSoD. Now this is before anything other then the basic windows drivers have been installed. Im now thinking its one of 2 things, A: the drive simply isnt compatible with something in my computer, or B, and Im really thinking this, the bad is simply going bad on me. oh, and yes-the computer boots perfectly with the drive disconected. I purchased this drive because I ordered it for a computer I did for my dad not to long ago, and it worked (still is) fine on his computer, no issues whatsoever. Im thinking its just bad, but part of me thinks I should try to see if my dad will let me borrow his drive to find out for sure, so what do you think? worth the effort or should I just RMA it and see if a replacement works? Do you think the problems the drive, or something else?

The sytem im running it on (if pertinent) is a Gigabyte m61p-S3 motherboard, an AMD athlon x2 6000+ windsor (stock) 6 gigs of patriot ddr2 6400 (2x2 set and 2x1 set) WD 500 GB SATA II drive, ATI Saphire 3870 x2 video card, and a Coolermaster 750 watt PSU.

This post has been edited by the_patriot09: 15 April 2009 - 08:10 PM

Best thing I can suggest doing is swapping it out with another drive (as you mentioned) and testing a different drive. You may want to try that drive in another computer too.

Yes, switch and swap DVD drives.

Im gonna try that either tonight or tomorrow, but just out of curiousity, why would it boot into ubuntu, and not into windows?

It would probably be a driver related issue then. Windows may have automatically installed wrong/bad drivers for it. Try uninstalling the drivers for the drive, and see if you can download ones off the manufacturers website.

I think I tried that but it wasnt to effective. Ill try it one more time I really dont want to send it back. Also, at one point, linux did an automatic disk check (it said it was checking disks/drives) and it failed, but it rebooted before I could see what failed and why. Could it be that whatevers going bad, linux doesnt need to operate correctly, while windows does? and as for drivers, samsung doesnt have any actual "drivers" on their sites, just firmware updates, but how do I update the firmware if I cant get windows to boot?

I might add, though, that I did try and do a firmware update to the drive shortly before the problems started. I ran the firmware update software, and the computer froze. I assume it froze anyway, it froze with a screen saying something like thankyou four updating your firmware or something or other, so I assumed it was done, and the computer was locked up, nothing would move (mouse wouldnt even respond) so I hit the reset switch, and it rebooted fine, rebooted 2 or 3 times (ran about 2 more days) before the BSoDs started showing up. would that have anything to do with it? I had forgotten I had done that till I was on samsungs site reading the firmware upgrade instructions where it says not to shut the computer down mid installation, though they said if the drive doesnt operate normally after that to just reinstall the firmware-which leads me back to, cant do it if I cant get windows to load, even into safe mode.

Most of the old time dvd geeks still flash their firmware in safe mode

I have a Samsung SATA DVD burner with LightScribe in this one.

Make sure the DVD drive is plugged into at least the SATA2 connector on the motherboard & preferably The SATA3 connector.

I had my SATA hard drive on #1 & put the DVD on #2 .
The unit gave me FITS until I moved the DVD drive to #3 .
I haven't had a single problem since I moved it.

It may not work for you but no longer then it takes to move a cable it would be worth a try if your DVD drive isn't on 3 or 4 already !

Ive actually tried it in every single SATA port there to no avail. I already have it packed up and ready to go, all I gotta do now is mail it in for a replacement.

Alright, just to let you all know, I got the new drive, plugged it in, working fine with no issues so far, so the problem was the original drive. Just thought ID let you all know, thanks for the advice!