DVD dies while CD still works ?

Has anyone heard of the DVD functionality in an optical drive dying, while the CD functionality still works ?

I've got a laptop here, that I can put a CD-RW with Ubuntu 9 in, and have it boot right up from the CD. However, if I put in the recovery disk for the laptop, or a retail Vista disk, the drive light just blinks rapidly and nothing ever happens.

The only thing I can think it would be now, is that the DVD functionality of the optical drive is damaged. I've never heard of such a thing though.

This person had the same problem. Turned out that blowing the dust out of it solved the problem.

And yeah, to answer your question, I've not only heard of it, it seems to happen to a lot of people. Mostly windows though. Not familiar with Ubuntu to know how it loads drivers on boot.

Yeah, I've been coming across more stories of this type of stuff happening lately. I think the key piece of info here is that it will read a CD but not a DVD. I've taken the drive out and blown it all out as good as it's going to get, there wasn't really any dust in there to begin with. I also cleaned the eye.

I'm entirely unsatisfied with the hp support forums. (I try to utilize a companies forums or email before resorting to a phone call because I don't have the luxury of unlimited cellphone time like some people) I was assured that all I needed to do was purchase one of their recovery kits and I would be up and running. Of course, that's not the case and now I'm out $16.

You can't tell who is an official support person over there, there's people with "while I may work for hp I am not an expert in all hp products. When I offer advice I am not speaking for hp" which to me sounds retarded and should be looked in to by someone with a law degree. If you're an hp employee, and you're offering advice on an hp forum, you either need to be speaking for hp or you need to leave out the fact that you are an hp employee while you're "off the clock" in my opinion.