An hour ago I used it. It is physically still there but if I play a disc nothing comes up. If I click on 'run' an error message comes up saying that the drive is unavailable.

Thanks

begs

The good news after working on it for bloody hours its fixed.

And just in case someone else ever has the same problem this is what I did.

I placed a cd cleaner into the drive.

I then removed the drive from my laptop and carefully wiped the external area with a clean dry cloth.

Placed it back in and it worked.

Ha ha nice 1 computers hey!!!

Out of curiosity, have you installed any new games? Perhaps an EA game with Securom? That's known to damage optical drives. My sister's DVD burner thinks it's only a dvd reader after installing an EA game with Securom -not the new version just coming out, the older version. It's why I won't buy any more EA software.

You should be able to reactivate the drive by reinstalling the drive's firmware.

Regards

LINK a place to start

My laptop is a Dell. So I thought I would tell them about this problem since I still have warranty. They asked me to carry out some tasks, which I could not! They duly said they will send out their engineer on Tuesday (today). He arrived installed the new drive and updated the BIOS. When they said they would. WOW!