Lenovo B570 laptop optical drive problems

[Alex Eisenhut]

Symptom: Barely ever recognizes disc. Many different discs that play fine in my stand-alone player. Cleaned the discs, cleaned the lens. Same result.
OS: Win 7
Drive: TSSTCorp CDDVDW TS-L633F
Firmware: LE02
Player software: VLC

Tried all the standard "troubleshooting", nothing. There's no malware on the PC, no driver issues. I tried to find new firmware for the drive but by the code it's a Lenovo special, nothing I could find.

Is it possible to know what the stupid drive is doing so I know where it fails? Can I find out the optical power the block is putting out with software?

I installed Opti Drive Control, but it gives high level info. It just says "insert disc"!  when I ask for a test, it seems to want to test the disc, I want to test the drive!

So eventually after rebooting the PC and inserting the disc a few dozen times it eventually sees the disc and plays fine. Even when it plays "fine" it trips up on slightly scratched discs.

The thing is ancient (2011) so all I could find were pulled spare drives.

Yes I still use DVDs, I get to watch tons of stuff from the library!  O0 Uh, when it works, that is...

[Monkeh]

Just buy a drive. Like.. any drive. They're pretty standard, just pop the faceplate on. Just don't buy any thing from TSST, they're universally junk.

[Alex Eisenhut]

in a laptop? They're all the same? OK, I'll look around. And yes, I can see that TSST is pretty junky...

[Monkeh]

I believe that's a SATA drive, so yes, they're standard. I doubt Lenovo used a special connector (I think I have a B570.. I'll have a look).

The only trouble may be with the faceplate, but usually they're fairly compatible.