VGN-FS215M DVD drive replacement

[butlerps]

Hey Guys, I've read a lot on this forum about VAIO optical drives and I don't think that you can help me, but I'll ask in the hope that someone out there has solved my problem.!

My vaio has a Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-K15 which can read but not write. I've tried renewing drivers etc etc, but to no avail, so I'm guessingthat the drive has gone down. I've just bought a Sony DW-Q520A DVD/CD drive from PC world and installed it into the Vaio, but when I switched it on, it di not boot up, saying that there was no OS!! In the bios it did not recognise either the cd/dvd drive or the 80gb hard drive. Putting the old Pioneer back in solved the problem with boot-up, but obviously i can't burn disks. Does this sound familiar to anyone!
Thanks a lot in anticipation of your help.
Philip
xx

[robpaxton]

It is possible that the new drive is faulty.

[Blencogo]

Hi Phillip and welcome.

You could try changing the boot order in the BIOS to read the Hard Disc first. It is trying to read the DVD Drive first and it may not be installed or be faulty

This should boot the Vaio and you can then troubleshoot the DVD Drive setup.

[butlerps]

I bought it new, but did notice that the seal on the box was broken. I'll take it back, but I guess I should have asked in my first post...'Should I be able to replace the DVD drive with an off the shelf drive, or do Sony do something dodgy with the motherboard/bios/firmware that restricts what drive can be installed'. If they do not then it looks more likely that the new drive is faulty!
Thanks for your quick reply Rob, I appreciate your help.

Cheers

Philip.

[butlerps]

hi, Blencogo thanks for the welcome and for the advice. Regarding the latter, I though of that also, I went into the bios, but unfortunately it does not recognise that the laptop has either a master0 or slave0 device, so I'm not able to specify boot up on harddrive since the bios thinks that there isn't one (does that make any sence). I've just booted up sucessfully with NO drive installed, so perhaps I'm jumping to conclusions but it looks like RobPaxton's advice could be correct
Old drive = bootup
no drive = bootup
new drive = no OS.
any more suggestions before I go back to PC World?
Thanks guys (I don't want to sound as though I'm giving you positive hand stroking, so I won't tell you how great I think you all are!!!)

[Blencogo]

Hi Philip,

I think you and Rob are right - back to PC World!!

It should work out of the box as it should be Plug & Play.

[butlerps]

Hi Philip,

I think you and Rob are right - back to PC World!!

It should work out of the box as it should be Plug & Play.

So to your knowledge Sony does not restrict what drives can be fitted, this info could be useful to convince PC World that the drive is duff!
Cheers for the advice.
P.

[robpaxton]

I haven't heard that Sony impose this type of bios restriction. My suspicion is with PC World. I know of several people who have been sold returned & non working goods from that establishment.

[butlerps]

I haven't heard that Sony impose this type of bios restriction.  My suspicion is with PC World.  I know of several people who have been sold returned & non working goods from that establishment.

Thanks guys, I'll keep you posted!
Philip.

[butlerps]

Okay, I took the drive and the vaoi to PC World, expecting to get a load of BS and the standard "it's not our problem", but actually the assistant was quite helpful. We tried another Sony DW-Q520A DVD drive and the laptop once again did not boot up, so I concluded that it was possible but unlikely that two of their drives were faulty. I called into a small computer shop and they had a NEC DVD_RW ND-6750A drive (cost of 54.00 pounds) which when connected allowed the laptop to boot up okay, i.e it worked!

SO, the SONY DW-Q520A dvd drive is NOT compatible with the SONY vaio BUT a NEC ND-6750A dvd drive IS compatible. GO FIGURE!!!!!