problems with dv9000

Oof... DV9000... okay, first of all, this is unrelated to the DVD drive problem, but just a common public service: Have you updated the BIOS to prevent the computer from killing itself? And are you keeping the heat sink clean? If not, your DVD drive problem might soon be the least of your worries as your motherboard will kill itself due to crappy thermal design by HP.

OK, so on to the DVD drive. You said you tried removing and reinserting the drive, but that's... kinda more advanced than the general user would think of. You took out the screw, ejected the drive, and pulled the drive out of the computer? If so, then cool, it's probably a software thing. If you did, open device manager (start->"devmgmt.msc" -> enter), and check under DVD/CD-ROM drives for any devices with a "!". Is your drive listed in that section?

(remember: there are multiple questions in this post, please address every one of them that's relevant. - I get a lot of replies from people that only answer one of them and I have to ask again, lol)

 

Okay, good with the BIOS update. But replacing Vista with Windows 7 doesn't update the BIOS... jus's'ya know

DVD drives are NOT "hot swappable"... you should *NOT* remove them while the computer is on unless you know exactly what you're doing... most of the time, the power surge of plugging the drive in will shut off the computer. At the very least, it'll hang the IDE controller on the board and crash the computer. Always shut the computer down, or at least put it in standy/sleep, before plugging/unplugging an optical drive. Only a small handful of computers with the "eject" lever/button have circuitry to provide hot-plugging to the DVD drive

If it's not listed on that page, have you checked the BIOS setup page to see if it's listed at power-on? It could very well be that you've either got a dead drive or a dead plug on the board...

 

In the BIOS are you able to see the drive? There should be somewhere in the BIOS where you can list the IDE or SATA devices.

If it is a SATA drive then I would try swapping it to a different SATA port on the motherboard.

 

It's an IDE, the DV9000 uses an IDE (PATA) optical drive and a SATA hard drive. I nearly made a business out of fixing DV-series motherboards and laptops, still got a good collection of parts

It could also be the small extension-board used on the DV9000 to extend the port out to the drive. I haven't seen one of those go bad, but DV9000's are significantly more rare than DV6000's, so I haven't seen a large sample to judge from... might be worth tearing apart the laptop and checking to see if that extension board came loose or broke somehow...

 

You are prolly having the filter issue. It doesn't show the drive under Computer??

I know the registry edit to fix it, but it is a bit complex and easy to screw up. I'll find you some instructions.

Edit: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/driverssupport/ht/upperfilters-lowerfilters.html


This is very common. Either related to iTunes or a windows update usually. I stopped caring about the why before long and just fix it now.

 

Right, but not if the drive doesn't even show up in Device Manager. It would show up, but have a "!", hence not show up as a drive in Computer. To have it not show up in Device Manager at all means it's either a hardware issue, or a low-level ATA controller driver problem...