Miscellaneous laptop discussions : HP nc8430 optical drive problems

HP nc8430 optical drive problems

Since I bought this laptop last July, I have had continual problems with the optical drive (DVD-/+RW, CD-RW combo drive). What happens is that it works perfectly well for about a week, and then, for no obvious reason, it completely fails to function. Sometimes, cleaning the optical eye with a q-tip and a bit of alcohol fixes it. Sometimes, just shutting down the laptop and cold-booting it back up fixes it. But only for a couple of days, and then it will fail again.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the device manager reports the DVD region settings incorrectly when this occurs. I have never set the DVD region, so I should have no region set and five changes left (indeed, I confirmed this the day I got the new drive). Now that it's failing to function, it reports that I only have two changes left. If the drive starts functioning properly again, region settings will be reported correctly (five changes left).

I have been through a total of four optical drives now via HP warranty replacements (including the original, so I'm on my third replacement now, which is an LG HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T20N). They have all been completely different makes and models, and they all have this same problem.

I was beginning to think that it was the motherboard or some other internal component that HP doesn't consider user-replaceable. However...

1. It just doesn't make sense that it would work one day, all-of-a-sudden fail the next day, and then work again the day after that; all with no obvious explanation and absolutely no user intervention. This behaviour isn't consistent with internal hardware failure.

2. There appear to be other people with this same or similar model having the same problems. All of the information I've read about this has noted that replacing the motherboard does not fix this problem.

Like I said, cold-booting the laptop or cleaning the optical eye sometimes helps. I have also reseated the drive, which results in the same temporary solution. "Temporary" is the key word here. There are no additional/updated drives or firmware for the drive. I have updated the BIOS, updated drivers where I could, etc.

Is anyone else here experiencing these problems with an HP laptop? Did you fix the problem? How?