How to tell if optical drive has failed

[bobbylon]

Windows 7. Elitebook.

All of a sudden my CD/DVD drive will not rip disks from Itunes, burn files to DVD using Roxio nor convert DVD/CD files using wondershare.

All of the drivers and regiistry edit steps in windows 7 have been tried and failed. It says the Device is working properly.

I couldn't figure out from HP help how to test if the Optical Drive still worked. None of those steps were present on my Elitebook.

Is this a fatiled drive or a hardware settings malfunction. 

If there isn't an easy solution, I'm ready to junk this laptop

[WAWood]

@bobbylon 

Optical drives use lasers and those work through lenses -- which like glasses, become dirty over time.  If they get dirty enough, the lasers can't read disks anymore.

The best solution to this is something called a lens cleaning kit -- which consists of a disk with plastic "whiskers" on it.  When you run the disk in the drive, it's spinning wipes the lenses clean.  It's a small and simple investment to see if that gets the drive working again.

Good Luck