DVD drive isn't working - well it is trying to..

[oi_antz]

I have recently installed a new motherboard. I am using the old DVD RW drive that I have had for years. I know it has worked since the upgrade because I also used it to reinstall the OS straight afterward. Now it won't recognize disks, be it DVD or CD. Any disc I put into it will cause the green light to come on and I can hear it spinning up and reading, but the drive never becomes available in caja. Yet, when I use caja to right-click and eject the drive, the tray opens. This seems to me that the power and data cables are correctly connected, but maybe the laser is too dirty or something. Can someone confirm this before I go and buy another drive? Unfortunately, I don't have access to another machine to debug with, and my flatmate only has IDE drives which my new motherboard doesn't support.. Cheers!

 

[C-Man]

Shoot some compressed air in the drive to blow it out. It's probably just some dust on the laser.
If not that, then it's not getting focus lock, and you might as well just get another drive.

 

[NiobiumTragedy]

The other thing is to make sure that the OS sees that it's on a new port on the new motherboard. For some reason in newer versions of Windows (Vista-7), you need to manually set up the DVD drive and the OS won't even acknowledge there is a drive there till you do. Make sure that the drive letter is set and that it sees the drive in Windows Explorer. To double check, make the OS eject the drive tray.