Great.. Alienware is as horrible as ever

LOL man that sucks ass. I'm glad I sold my alienware and built my own computer!

you've been waiting for 3 hrs to be transferred?

My DVD drive quit reading and writing DVDs, but would read CDs fine. I called them up and they diagnosed and sent me a new one after about 30 mins.

Well, you *could*, but you then ...

1. Have multiple warranties instead of one
   
   
2. Need a fair bit more skill then building a desktop
   

A google search on DIY laptops and barebones laptops should get you started. If you are serious.

ive heard of experienced desktop builders fail horribly when they try making a notebook so dont feel bad.

I am suffering the same problem... cd drive in my 766 broke, won't write... i am out of warranty, so after my hours of waiting on the phone, i am told no parts for me....

Yoda here on the forums pointed out that the 766 is actually a uniwill N766
They have parts in stock, i got a dvdrw for 109, and it arrives on monday...

www.uniwill.com


my thread and with everyones comments is here...
http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=153019


Good luck.... feel free to pm me if you need more info...

I did what now?

Okay, one of us needs to ease up on the medication

and I like mine far soo much that I ain't giving it up

I didn't say which model it was, but yeah the Area-51M2 was a 766 if I remember correctly.

Now... on that note. For those that so feel inclined and are comfortable with taking things apart. Try taking one of the new 6650s and swapping the adapter. Nothing against AW, but at the time of my purchase, they only offered the Mashita and while I love the idea of having a DVD-R, a 2X is woefully inadequate, AND Mashita doesn't even support their own product.

So for those who aren't under warranty and are willing to take the jump... might be worth it if you don't want to go through uniwill and get a lite-on (never used them, so I have no clue what the quality is).

Unless you're comfortable taking the DVD drive apart, I wouldn't recommend it. It's pretty simple, but you know how it goes when you aren't comfortable and you try to screw with something... even when simple.

Oh yeah, I did some checking and I think I know the issue:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/88813

one of the recent (within 6 months) upgrades from MS deals with CSS decrypting, which the Mashita drive does not support, nor does the company itself when it comes to its current drives.

Quick question out of curiosity, you guys with the drive problems, do you have Starforce protection drivers installed on your system?

Not I.... since just on principle, i generally refuse to install something that uses starforce protection...

Had the same problem, CD rom stopped reading, called in and I felt like a complete moron, it had been a long time since I'd cleaned the lens. 2 seconds with a qtip and alcohol and I was back in business full time.

I've had moments like that too...

Sadly this is not one of them for me at least. Plopped the bugger into another system and it worked just fine.

It wasn't a Win XP system, so I think my diagnosis in another thread is still valid. Still in all, this drive has had to be replaced 4X and I'm getting tired of it.

Just bump me to the Lite-on and let's get it over with, shall we?

For a long time lite-on's were what you used to burn 1 to 1 backup copies of games. They had all the read features that would see through scratches/copy protections. (something most other RW's skipped to cut production costs)

While I can't speak for thier DVD RW quality, thier cd burners were the best if you didn't wanna pay 130 for a plextor CD RW.

I assume most of them are pretty decent quality nowadays too ... but who knows. Tech industry shifts all the time .. Dell LCD's aren't the greatest anymore kinda thing. heh