Please Help: Drive will not read any discs after Nero install (Lite-On LH-18A1P)

This thread is about the Lite-On LH-18A1P. Click here to see full specs

Hi, recently my drive suddenly lost the ability to read any disc at all.

Upon insertion of the disc, the drive will show green for a second or two, sound like its spinning for several seconds, but no recognition of any of this occurs in windows.

I recently installed Nero 9.2.6 on my PC, I burnt several data DVDs over a day or so which all worked fine etc, when going to burn another later on it didn't recognize any blank DVDs which I later realized was the PC not recognizing any discs at all. Uninstalling Nero hasn't helped, but I feel the software must relate, very strange coincidence if not.

The following is all the information I can think of regrading the problem, sorry if it is a bit spammy, i've never posted on a forum for PC help before, despite building my own computers for many years now and working in IT (unqualified, "google technician" if you catch my drift) for a while. I have found CD freaks to be a huge asset over the years though so this is the first place I came, and I just want to provide as much information as I can to help you help me, which is as follows:

1) I have tried unplugging/replugging the cables, which lead to a massive inside the case cleanout and whatnot so my case is cleaner and more organised than it has been in awhile (yay, but no luck)

2) Tried other IDE cables

3) Tried flashing the drive with the latest firmware upgrade from liteon

4) Tried turning off CD burning ability in Windows (a working solution for many a threads found via google)

5) Tried deleting the upper/lower filters in the registry which was another solution for many, unfortunately I didn't even have a lower filters registry key which means it doesn't work according to the M$ help page for that.

6) Tried updating drivers, rolling back drivers, uninstalling the drive and rebooting, etc. Also tried reinstalling my motherboard drivers (IDE channels etc).

7) Uninstalled every piece of CD/DVD related software I could find on my PC.

8) Haven't tried a drive cleaning disc yet, unfortunately I've only really bothered trying to fix it when I finally wanted my disc drive back again tonight, and won't be able to buy one until morning.

9) Drive is picked up fine by Bios, won't let me boot to CD however.

10) Device manager doesn't detect any problems, says it's working fine etc.

Could reinstalling Nero somehow be of use? Any tips? Thanks for reading this far ha, and if you can help me as well, it would be much appreciated.

PC Specs:
Lite-on LH18A1P Drive
Vista SP1
Nvidia Nforce 680i SLI mobo
3 gig ram
Intel Core2 Duo 6700 2.66ghz
8800GTX GPU

Also as far as I recall, the drive is a year old or maybe more, the rest of the PC much older, but I keep it all in good nick as I build computers myself as a hobby.

Update: Found an old DVD drive in the cupboard, (NEC ND-1100A) works fine simply swapped the cables, so cable, board, etc are fine.

The plot thickens, dead drive maybe?

Further update:Ended up biting the bullet and getting a new burner yesterday, need to burn stuff bad this weekend and didn't want to get caught with all the shops closed over Easter. I'll further investigate the drive at some point but it could just be dead.

Thanks anyway to anyone who read it etc.

I would add this to the top of my main post to avoid people reading it but it won't let me edit anymore.

Hi!I guess, the drive went bad. You could try to boot from a bootable CD or DVD as last test.
Forum policy allows editing a post within 30 minutes. So there is nothing wrong on your side

Michael

Glad to hear someone can get Nero to install; Haven't been able to successfully install it yet!