G73SW Optical Drive Issues

[Shadowsin]

First off... I love my G73SW, other than the optical drive. I am currently on my 2nd optical drive. The first one that was in here was a Matsushi err--- Panasonic UJ240 BD-RW. Worked great for about 8 months and now it is failing too. Is it the dust suck in these or what? I have kept it very clean and go through a can of air a month, making sure the dust stays out of my baby. However, regardless of my cleanliness, this drive is now failing too. I have opened a ticket and it seems I am going to have to now send my laptop in, yet again to get the drive replaced. This would be the 3rd drive. I am almost to the point of just buying an external and calling it a day, as I do not have the patience for not having my laptop with me all the time between school and games. The closest svc center is down in Cali, which means I may be out of a laptop for a least a week.

Any ideas on how to keep this 2nd drive humming? I have pain stakingly taken it out and checked every single part of it, not a drop of dust and I have never used any chemicals on it either. It spins, but it does not wind up. Every once in awhile I can get it to appear in BIOS and once in an eon I can even see it in devices. I have gone through all the upper and lower filter crap, MS fix it, BIOS updates, etc. with no avail. I even removed iTunes, as it adds stuff to the regedit in the same section as your DVD filters.

[billyray520]

How do you know it is the drive that is failing? Have you ever been able to try the drive in another laptop to check it? The reason I ask, is that the G73SW was affected by the Intel chip recall back in early 2011. The recall had to do with the PCIe controller, which affected ports 2 and up. In our G73SW's the hdd's use ports 0 and 1. The optical drive uses port 2.

When did you buy your notebook? Did it have a "revised edition" sticker?

Asus will replace your notebook if it is affected by this Intel recall.

[Pitcher@asus]

yep, if in warranry, i suggest you send back to asus service center to check it or replace it.