[Cialug] OT: DVD drive problem

[Tim Wilson]

I know a question about Windows make most people on the list shudder, but I
think someone at Best Buy is blowing smoke (or has inhaled too deeply).

My wife's laptop started experiencing issues a little over a week ago, with
one of the auto-launch programs saying that a device was not using DMA
mode.  So I went to the disk controller in Device Manager, and sure enough,
it was set to use DMA mode if available, but it was using PIO mode.  We also
noticed that the drive was making noises, and the laptop was quite sluggish
when anything was using the DVD drive.  Since it is under warranty, I took
it in to Best Buy, and the "tech" at Geek Squad said it wasn't a failing
drive, it was corrupted codecs.  He played an audio CD, and it skipped and
hesitated.  So his argument was that it had to be a codec, because even in
PIO mode, the CD should be fine.

I'll admit, that test was pretty convincing, but it still doesn't explain
the sluggishness of the laptop while the DVD is in use.  That to me sounds
like a PIO mode issue.

Does this sound remotely plausible to anyone?  Would putting a live CD
distro in and testing with it prove helpful?

-- 
Tim
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