Laptop DVD player problem

[juxtaman]

I'm fishing in the vast brain bank of flashkit here for some help.

My laptop, (dell inspiron 500e) has decided it won't read any optical media other then dvd anymore.

Normally this wouldn't bother me as such BUT it's a pain in the ass if you need to boot from cd or you need to upgrade any o/s.

So why would a device do that, and is there a fix for it other then buying some very exspensive proprietary part.

I really want to go slackware but not with my junk like this.

[hurricaneone]

reinstall the drive, maybe?

[juxtaman]

It doesn't work from boot.. so i didn't think it's thed river since it's not exactly O/S related..

I was thinking it was a bios problem but the flash for mine doesn't have any info about the cd

[Markp.com]

I have the same problem... I tried reflashing it or something like that... but couldn't work out what to do with the files I'd downloaded... so it still doesn't work.

Let me know how you get on though!