DVD Optical drive not showing up in my Toughbook?
Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2014 3:43 pm
Hi folks,
I just found this forum after trawling online for info on Toughbooks (Thanks for the registration approval, Robert ). I recently came into possession of a CF73 ( Serial underneath is I *think* U38TXBE) Toughbook which didn't boot. I tried using a Windows XP disc to boot it up but the optical drive didn't seem to work. It has power to it and makes a sort of 'initializing' sound when the laptop is first switched on plus the light on it flashes if you put a disc in it. However it won't show up in Windows despite having tried the common Registry tweaks that are out there to get it to do so. I've also just noticed that in the BIOS it says 'Primary Master - 60Gb' which I presume is the HDD but where it says 'Secondary Master' it shows 'None'. I ended up booting from a USB stick and throwing a copy of W7 Home Premium on there, getting some of the drivers to work like WLAN, Audio and Chipset took a lot of detective work but I got there in the end.
So all is good, everything works as it should - except the optical drive. I've removed it and re-seated it and it clicks solidly into place and as I said, seems to spin up and has power going to it but it plain refuses to show up in the BIOS or Windows. During the re-install of the OS, when applying Windows Updates at one point I'm sure it actually did show up under 'My Computer' as some sort of generic DVD drive but then after restarting the PC to apply further updates, when it rebooted the DVD drive icon had vanished again. No idea why and previous to it vanishing I'm unsure whether it actually appeared in the BIOS or not.
So, would appreciate some advice on what to try next. Is there anything I can do to get it working, could it be a loose connection inside on the motherboard or something?
Many thanks in advance for any info!
I just found this forum after trawling online for info on Toughbooks (Thanks for the registration approval, Robert ). I recently came into possession of a CF73 ( Serial underneath is I *think* U38TXBE) Toughbook which didn't boot. I tried using a Windows XP disc to boot it up but the optical drive didn't seem to work. It has power to it and makes a sort of 'initializing' sound when the laptop is first switched on plus the light on it flashes if you put a disc in it. However it won't show up in Windows despite having tried the common Registry tweaks that are out there to get it to do so. I've also just noticed that in the BIOS it says 'Primary Master - 60Gb' which I presume is the HDD but where it says 'Secondary Master' it shows 'None'. I ended up booting from a USB stick and throwing a copy of W7 Home Premium on there, getting some of the drivers to work like WLAN, Audio and Chipset took a lot of detective work but I got there in the end.
So all is good, everything works as it should - except the optical drive. I've removed it and re-seated it and it clicks solidly into place and as I said, seems to spin up and has power going to it but it plain refuses to show up in the BIOS or Windows. During the re-install of the OS, when applying Windows Updates at one point I'm sure it actually did show up under 'My Computer' as some sort of generic DVD drive but then after restarting the PC to apply further updates, when it rebooted the DVD drive icon had vanished again. No idea why and previous to it vanishing I'm unsure whether it actually appeared in the BIOS or not.
So, would appreciate some advice on what to try next. Is there anything I can do to get it working, could it be a loose connection inside on the motherboard or something?
Many thanks in advance for any info!