Gavtech
I'ts taken a while but earlier today I took of the top, opened up the DVD drive, found the black ring covered with dust, cleaned it and put everything back together.
Result - no change! I was so hopeful...
It still reads all disks except DVD-RAMs. The DVD-RAMs all work perfectly in another Panny DVD recorder but not in this one.
They all get error message Cannot read disk, please check the disk and "No Read" on the front panel display.
There are a variety of sounds whilst it tries for about a minute to read the disk. Some of these are quiet "graunching sounds", nothing violent and some are quiet ticking.
Any other ideas. I do not want to incur a large charge by returning it to Panny for repair as it is no longer under guarantee.
Thanks for the previous idea. Pity it did not work.
Steve
Yes it is a pity.
Have you used / played any or all of these RAM discs in a PC at all? - It doesn't sound like you have from your report, but I ask because certain LG writers have been found to cause problems [ changing some flags ] with RAM discs. [ Since they play OK in another machine this seems almost certainly not the issue ]
That fact that it is only RAM discs suggest there is something especially challenging about reading them at the initialisation stage.
I do not have any good information about the requirements, but it maybe that the laser current requirement is higher when reading RAMs... and the fact that it struggles, may be down to the laser having aged and just not being capable of the needed output.... or the power supply struggles when having to feed a critically higher current output.
This could perhaps be caused by failing capacitors in the Power Supply section - which can give themselves away by leaking or having bulging tops .... or by voltage sub-regulators failing which is usually invisible but sometimes betray by having overheated leaving heatmarks as an indicator.
[ Is your machine in a stack? ...or perhaps poorly ventilated ]
But this is all speculation on my part. I've not heard of a pattern of failure yet in the EX75 / 85 series.
I would not have thought OS corruption could be the problem [ once fully reset] but who knows.
Anything which improves the optical link is worthwhile so perhaps cleaning the laser lens [ very carefully] may improve matters....but the fact that other discs are not affected suggests that is not the issue.
It is difficult to suggest the best strategy here... because failures of this sort, if they mean replacement of the DVD drive, are prohibitively expensive and are usually uneconomic unless under guarantee or insurance.
You could have a look at this thread and see if the approach suggested there might bear fruit:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=711820
Good luck.