Acer Aspire Optical Drive Problems

[Qui-Gon John]

I have an Acer Aspire 5100-3357, from April 2007, with Windows 7.

Optical drive will read a data DVD, DVD movie, a data CD but not an audio CD.

I have already tried the following steps.

1. Went into REGEDIT and there is a procedure to remove lines for UPPER FILTERS and LOWER FILTERS, I had an entry for LOWER FILTERS, removed it, reboot, no help.

2. I uninstalled the device in DEV MGR, restarted and it found it and installed it, but still did not work.

3. I removed the optical drive from the laptop and then reinserted it, to reseat the connector, no help.

4. I cleaned the optical drive with an optical disk drive cleaning CD I have, no help.

5. I tried more than one audio CD.

Because it reads 3 out of 4 types of discs, I doubt it is the hardware itself, but not sure what to try next.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[Qui-Gon John]

I did another test. I installed a blank HDD in that laptop, then installed a clean copy of Windows 7, then I tried to read an audio CD, still no go. So I guess the optical drive itself is defective. Even though it is odd that it only will not read audio CD's, but yes to data CD's, DVD movies & data DVD's.

Let me know what you think?

[David]

Have you tried firmware updates?