Sony Vaio CD drive won't read

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FS740/W laptop, and I am having some difficulty getting my CD/DVD driver to run. I was having some problems with my Windows Office programs, so I decided to uninstall Microsoft Office with the intention of reinstalling it right away. When I inserted by Windows Office CD, my computer made a sound as if my driver was attempting to read the CD, but then nothing happened. I checked My Computer>DVD RW Drive (D:) and it is blank, as if a CD has not been inserted. I also went to the Sony website and downloaded all the of the CD/DVD software updates they had for my computer, and it didn't seem to help at all. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!
- Jacob

Edited by hamluis, 22 March 2011 - 04:51 PM.
Moved from XP to Internal Hardware.

You can insert a bootable CD/DVD...into the drive...to see if the drive is functional.

You can also try a music CD...a CD/DVD containing video...to test functionality.

If it isn't, then a replacement may be needed.

FWIW: Optical drives ordinarily do not require special drivers/updates...so I'm curious as to what you downloaded from the Sony site.

Louis

Hey Louis,
Thank you for your reply. I didn't think that downloading the updates from the Sony website would do anything. It was a shot in the dark.
I downloaded a program called CDCheck. When I 'checked' by D drive, it came up with 3 errors. The results look like this:
Kind Type File Message
error win 32 D:\ The device is not ready. (code:21)
critical process D:\ File/directory in setup window now found! (code: 2)
critical process Process aborted! (code: 3)

Could I just use an external CD drive, such as this one to fix my problem:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00303H908/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B001RKS7AC&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0JVZ3HRD5MQX8YVKS9AX

Well...I believe you can simply replace the drive in your laptop, no reason to use an external drive that I can see.

Before I wrote the drive off...I would try cleaning the lens.

Example: http://www.superwarehouse.com/Maxell_CD_Laser_Lens_Cleaning_Disk/190048/p/619491

Louis

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,22892-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html

From what I see, that program won't tell you anything about your optical drive.

Edited by hamluis, 22 March 2011 - 04:50 PM.