Sony Vaio + Optiarc AD-7560S not working

[juliegauloise]

Hi.  I'm a newbie and hoping for help.  I have Sony Vaio VGN-NS11J running Windows Vista SP2.  The DVD drive, Optiarc AD-7560S stopped working.  The drive will open and close but doesn't recognise there is a disc.  It won't detect CDs, or  DVDs, having worked fine for months.  I upgraded the firmware (?) if that's what it is called, to SS05 and sometime after that, the drive stopped working.  Are the two connected?  If so, is there a way to roll back to the previous version?  I've tried uninstalling, rebooting, etc. and also tried the Microsoft Fix thing.  They also offer a solution by editing the REgistry but the entries in their screenshot don't match mine.  Mine says "value not set", and I don't have Upper Filters or Lower Filters entries in my Registry.

My DVD drive is also configured as Drive F, with SD/MMC being "D", and Memory Stick being "E".  I can't remember if this was the original configuration, so don't know if this is relevant.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[Blencogo]

I take it there are no yellow warnings ! next to the drive in Device Manager?

Have you tried a bootable disc to see if that is recognised?

Does Device Manager show the drive as working properly?  If Yes then the problem is likely to be a hardware issue.  Try cleaning the laser lens inside the drive with a liquid lens cleaner.  Also check the lens carrier slides freely from one extreme to the other inside the drive without sticking.

It still could be software and you will have to decide if to try a full system recovery back to factory settings - in a number of cases this will fix the problem but in many more cases you may have to replace the drive if the laser or another component has become defective.