DVD RW DW-D56A

[amoss]

DVD drive problem - DVD RW DW-D56A. Hello, I've bought a sony vaio FS115Z notebook. At first the dvd drive worked fine, after 3 months it started to act funny and now it won't read any DVDs at all! Help! is this just a bad dvd drive? anyone else have this problem?
Many thanks
Alison

[surferdude]

Hi Alison,
I'm attempting to find a solution to a similar problem. I have a Vaio notebook, PCG-GRT816S, and have successfully copied to TDK DVD-RW media for the past 18 months. I bought a new supply of these discs (2-4x speed) a couple of days ago and have been unable to write to them, although I can still write to my older discs. I decided the discs must have come from a faulty batch, although TDK discs have never failed me before, so returned them to the supplier and bought identical ones from another store - same result! I notice that the new discs have VERSION 2.0 printed on the packaging, (presumably signifying an updated product ?). It would be interesting to know if your discs are this version.

I'm concerned that, even in the short-term, drives may be unable to write to discs as they become upgraded.

Hope this is of interest, although I realise it is of no help to you.

John

[amoss]

Hello John,
thanks for the reply...don't know if you have the same optical drive as me...DW-D56A? I was an hour on the phone to Sony support yesterday and got nowhere, I have to rollback my system to the day that i bought it before they will collect it to find out what is going on! this means I'll lose all software that I've installed ! nightmare! They are calling me tomorrow to see if I've done it...haven;t! I think it is this particular drive. what drive have you got?

[Blencogo]

If you look back in this forum you will see countless problems have been reported with this drive. Sony must know there is a generic fault.

There is a firmware update on Vaio-Link you can try but I suggest to get it back to Sony for replacement if you are still in the warranty period.

[JonnyBoy]

If you look back in this forum you will see countless problems have been reported with this drive.  Sony must know there is a generic fault.

Hi there!

I have an FS115 with the same drive. Had the exact same problem at the exact same time period (3 months after i bought it) tried everything but couldnt fix it. even the firmware upgrade made no difference.

the DW-D56A is a deffetcive drive. i dont know a single person who has it and didnt have any problems...

what i did was went to e-support and opened a case where i explained that i tried everything.
after a few days they had my laptop taken in and replaced the faulty drive.

i got it back in less than 14 days which was rather less than i expected but i still had problems. see... they replaced the drive with a new one that worked perfectly except, the new one was not fitted properly and you needed to keep pressure on the tray for the pc to recognise it was there....

so back it went again and so on and so forth and in less than 45 days after my initial problem was displayed in e-support i had a working laptop again... on the bright side it was covered by the warranty so all this didnt cost me a penny.

moral of the story: try and have your laptop repaired through the procedure in e-support but be patient... be very patient

Sony have got to improve their after sales service. it is a disgrace to the company...

[JonnyBoy]

also check out this post.
it describes the problems i encountered when i realised that the DW-D56A was made by the devil...

[JonnyBoy]

forgot to put the hyperlink on the page for the post

I apologise for doing this...

[amoss]

Hi john,

you've got me worried! 45 days! I couldn't live without my laptop, I need it everyday for work! My warranty runs out at the end of march, thank god i finally got around to complaining about this blasted drive! I logged a case with e-support today, so that at least I have proof that I'm still within the warranty period.
I've installed the latest firmware upgrade, its worse, it now doesn't even try reading the disc! I just want a new drive put in and thats that! I'm going to look back at the other complaints you mentioned. I don't find it that easy to navigate in this site, get confused whether i've logged on to e-support, club-vaio etc! I'll keep going.

Thanks
Alison

[robpaxton]

If e support don't get back to you in a couple of days then your best bet is to telephone vaio-link.

[JonnyBoy]

hey there!

that's why i told you all this. cause it would be a shame to find yourself out of warranty stuck with that drive.

in any case, i would really like to believe that mine was an unfortunate story that happened because of bad luck, awful karma or even cause i hadnt been very nice last year and god was punishing me... so most probably you will have to give up yours for just some 10 days or so.

the e-support website uses a different login system than club vaio. you probably have figuered that out by now right? pretty simple actually but if you think it's too complicated or they fail to reply to your case within a couple of days, do what Rob says and give em a ring. it's a lot easier to make em understand what your problem is by phone. whatever you do try and make it quick so that you dont run out of warranty.

Good luck!!
let us know how it goes.