Hi all,

the Dvd R/Rw drive on my laptop is having issues reading disc put into it.. It was still doing okay a few days back when i used it to copy a few discs.. But now it don't seem to be able to read or write, and the "D Drive" show that there is no disc inserted eventhough there is one inside..

However on occasions it is able to read audio cds, but after a few seconds of playing WMP displays a msg stating that there is an error with the disc.. I was also able to play a dvd-rw disc that was formatted as InCD without problem..

Is this a software problem or could it be a hardware malfunction..? (if it is a hardware issue, how come it can it still read certain disc..?) I suspect it could be caused by an anti-spyware freeware called Spyware Terminator by Crawler.. I installed it but felt that it slowed down my laptop quite a bit, so i unstalled it.. The uninstallation damaged my IE, so i did a system restore to try and fix the issue.. IE was fixed but the dvd drive is still not functioning...

See if you can restore it back further (when it was normal).
Run an anti-virus scan to make sure no malicious things have entered ur computer.
Otherwise, try using 'Run' feature from the Start menu, to double check that it works.

Ehhh don't quite understand..? Use 'Run' feature from the Start menu, to double check what works..?

Scans turn out nothing.. I'm not sure if the problem was caused by Spyware Terminator (that i already deleted).. Or could it be a hardware malfunction, sigh..

Are there any diagnostic tools to determine if this is a software problem or hardware problem..?