Vaio VGN A217S Problems readind CD ROMs

[robertoe]

I have a sony Vaio VGN A217S which came with Windows XP Home. I immediately upgraded to XP Pro and all was well. Just lateley I have had problems that the laptop will not read any CD rom disks, but is perfectly happy with DVD disks. I don't want to do a full recovery or this will take me back to XP Home.
Does anybody know the answer?

[rich912]

Welcome to the club Robert (I mean that in more ways than one!)

There are numerous posts from people experiencing exactly the same problem as you, myself included.
Unless you have installed burning software recently, it is probably a hardware problem and as the drive has been working with XP pro installed there is very little chance that a restore will correct anything.
For what it is worth there are a couple of things that you can try.
Firstly a careful clean of the laser lens with a proprietary dry cloth. If that has no effect then try uninstalling the drive in Device Manager, re-boot and let Windows `discover¿ and install the drivers.
Sorry to be the prophet of doom but I wish you luck.