Laptop not playing Discs issue

[gman]

Hi folks. My laptop seems to have ceased playing cds. I have tried a few things without luck. When i try to copy a cd...it says No Supported Drive Detected. I cant even do a system restore, as it wont run the disc. Anyone have an idea as to what the deal is?
I have tried uninstalling the Cd Rom, which re-detected itself when i restarted Xp, but still not playing discs

 

[LMP]

There's a chance you've worn out the reader in your disc drive or something. I'd call whatever tech support you've got and see what's up.

 

[gman]

Well.....i reckon....the Cd/Dvd rom has been used maybe 10-15 times at the very most in its entire life. I went on the Microsoft site and got 15 mins free tech help. They took control remotely and told me its a registry issue and would take 30 mins to sort, but cost me a min $20.
So anyone have any ideas how to sort this myself (bearing in mind DVD rom dont work at all) I was thinking....putting my system restore disc on to usb pen drive and try and run it from there. Or....Go down the line of Linux. But i would want to remove XP if i did that. Is that advisable/possible?

 

[Liesje]

Now I don't know much about registry hacks, but in the past I've had good luck deleting the upper and lower filters to fix CD/DVD drive issues. No idea what that means, but I Googled it before and it's worked for me several times! Maybe that is the registry hack they were going to try?

Another thing I've also seen before is that the connection TO the drive is configured wrong. In your Device Manager, you need to see a primary or secondary IDE (if your hard drive is a SATA, then your CD/DVD drive is going to be the primary (only) IDE connection, and if your hard drive also uses an IDE connection, then your CD/DVD drive is going to be the secondary IDE connection). You may want to check that and reinstall it.

 

[gman]

Well Liesje.....you are indeed correct......the removal of the upper and lower filters from the registry is in fact the direction microsoft were hinting at. But.....I kinda got it going again myself. I thought i had uninstalled it last night then did a reboot....but it was actually the hard drive i uninstalled (oopsy)
So today...i uninstalled the DVD ROM and rebooted the system, and voilla.....it sorted it. I can faff about with the ROM again. Skippy Doo
Slight concern tho that microsoft were trying to con me into paying to get this issue fixed, making out it was a more complex issue than it actually was