Dell Studio optical drive suddenly not reading all discs..?
 

This is a weird one. Today, suddenly, for no apparent reason, the drive (a TSSTcorp TS-T633A) in my brand new Studio 1535 drive stopped reading a lot of discs (but not all discs, strangely).

For an example, it does read: a DVD of Jacob's Ladder, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (a CD-ROM) and R.E.M. Automatic for the People (an audio CD).

It does not read, well, anything else, including The Sims 2 and all the expansions, which include both CD- and DVD-ROMs, any of my Deep Space 9 DVDs or a home-burned backup data DVD.

So it reads, out of my entire CD-ROM and DVD collection that I have with me, a single DVD video disc and one CD-ROM game. (I only have the one audio CD.)

What the heck? If it wasn't reading anything at all then the problem would be obvious (broken drive...) but this sudden extreme pickyness leads me to believe that something I did caused the problem. The last disc I was able to use in the drive was The Sims 2: Nightlife, which I installed with no problems (that particular one is a CD-ROM). I then put in the Pets expansion (a DVD-ROM) to install, and was told there was no disc in the drive. Since then it has not recognised any discs at all, apart from the three at the top.

Is this something to do with some kind of copy protection (known to be on some of The Sims 2 games) breaking my drive? If so, how do I fix it? And if it's not that, then what's wrong?

if its not a software issue, you could always go into the drive and clean the lens with some isopropyl alochol (one of your cd's probably got it dirty). also dont forget to oil the poles while you're in there!

It's a slot-loading drive, how do I clean it?

take the top cover off, you should be able to see the laser from there, and then you can just take a q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol and clean the lens gently.

oh btw, you gotta visit here: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=72982

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=71893

its a common issue with the studio