Laptop CD drive seems to be dying a long and painful death

[Gumblackwood]

Before my Toshiba Satellite A45 laptop was even a year out of the box, I began to notice some problems with the combination CD/DVD drive. Its problems started in that it wasn't always able to play DVDs for the full duration of movies. I didn't see any real problems, it still played music and data CDs and not every DVD had problems. By last Thanksgiving, I was getting all sorts of errors whenever I attempted to load anything (mostly 700-something errors according to the error windows). My Dad, who happens to be good with computer problems like this, said that the drive could be wearing out. It makes some pretty awful grunting noises, and I decided not to expect it to load anything for a while. Sometimes the computer didn't seem to recognize that there was a valid disc in the drive. I downloaded all sorts of things that I thought could have been fixes, I purged the computer of viruses as best I could (symantec found none), and I even began looking into getting a replacement, as the warranty had just run out. Toshiba is unbelievably cryptic on their website in trying to get this part, I want a part, not repair, which seems to be all they offer.

Well, anyway, I got thrown for a loop on a couple of occasions. It seems my laptop was able to load and play the entire original Knights of the Old Republic, though it loaded slowly. I figured that perhaps taking out the drive and replacing it as I did a few days before had done the trick. A data cd my fiancee made on her laptop worked fine as well. But again, WoW wouldn't load last I tried.

Is there something I missed? I don't think it's the WoW cds, they loaded on my desktop just fine. As I have no access to my desktop at the moment, I'd be playing WoW right now if I could just load it. I'll post any needed specs, look for programs, figure out the exact errors I'm getting or do just about anything asked to get the drive functioning properly before I go ahead and attempt to get the part again.

[DocBobo]

You could try to find a local repair shop that specialized on notebook repairs. I highly doubt you can order single parts of their laptops directly from Toshiba. After all the repair service is what brings them a lot of money.

Technically all notebook CD/DVD drives follow a form standard, so it might be possible that most CD drives marked for laptop use (slimline?) might fit in your Toshiba Satellite. I wouldn't bet money on it though.

If your laptop has USB2.0 support you could buy an external DVD drive and simply plug that one in. The bus is fast enough for safe burning and it's propably cheaper than a repair.