Problem BD Drive - any ideas

[pewe]

I have a BD drive in my Acer Laptop (BC-5500S). (Dual boot Win7 and Vista)

It was reading BD ok until the other day.

Now it will not recognise new BD discs - I say new because discs it has read before will still read occasionally (maybe once out of 10 attempts).

Can anyone suggest any reasons why the problem has suddenly appeared.

Acer say it is a software problem, but if I re-boot the PC into Vista instead of Win7 I get the same problem which I never had before, and it still reads CD and DVD - although I'm not familiar with the differences between these and BD - in both OS.

[David McMinn]

I don't have a portable blu-ray; but, I have an Acer laptop. I'm currently running Roxio Creator Pro 2010 on it. When I encounter a problem and there have been many, I usually just uninstall and reinstall and that most always clears up the problem.

I was wondering, do you have Window 7 64 bit or 32 bit? Why would you need to OS platforms? I'm thinking there's something not communicating correctly because you are using 2 different platforms even though they're both windows. This also occurs with my Roxio software when I'm using XP and then transfer to Win7.

Basically, I just use the 2010 software and when there's a problem I just uninstall and reinstall. It's frustrating; but, it works so far.

[pewe]

Thanks for the input David.

The BD drive is an internal one (Sony BC5500s). I'm sure the problem is not the software.

When I put a CD/DVD in the drive it reads OK and the drive shows in Windows explorer.
When I put a Blu Ray in the drive it spins for about 2 minutes trying to read, and when it eventually stops Windows explorer shows 'Do disc in Drive'.

The laptop is 18 months old, and I have had the dual boot on it for the past 12 months.

This problem with Blu Ray discs only started a week or so ago with both new Blu Ray discs and older ones that it has always recognised before.

[Astaiir]

Ditto!
I have the same problem!
I have Sony VGN-NW21ZF for 1 year with the Optiarc 5500S BD-ROM and now a month ago it stopped to 'see' and 'read' any Blu ray. Well, I didn't check it like 100x times a minut, but as many times as I tried to put a Blu Ray, it doesn't read it, it doesn't literally see it. When I click on the ROM it says it is empty. But it reads all CDs and DVDs.
And I already did some research - the drivers and software isn't the problem!
So, any help?
Pewe- thanks for creating this thread, I guess we have the same problem

[pewe]

Astaiir -
We are not alone.
I have found numerous posts on a variety of forums from people with problems with this unit filing with BD after a period of time.

I have written to Acer who are not interested as the unit is over 12 months.

I have also written to Sony who are not interested as it is an OEM product.

So all of us with a problem seem to be abandoned - short of buying a replacement at over £70