LiteOn LVD-2001 Drive Replacement

I had some family coming over for my birthday recently and we were going to catch a flick on the 'ol home theater. So of course the night before my DVD player quits working =). Now you're probably thinking "Why is this guys LVD-2001 black?". I painted it using some Krylon Fusion paint so that it would match the rest of my equipment. Anyway, the problem was when I'd put in a DVD it would bring up the "PLZ WAIT" screen for about 45 seconds and the DVD drive would spin up and make some funny clicking noises, then it would display the "NO DISC" screen. The curious part is that it read and played CDs with no problem, even CDs containing MPEG4 video, played them without a hitch. It was late so I put off trying to fix it until the next morning. After fooling around with it for a little while the next morning I decided to take a look at the AVSForum and see if anyone else had seen this problem. I found a couple of posts with the same description, but no solutions. I knew the inside of the player pretty well because I'd taken it apart to paint it, so I thought I'd pop it open again and see whats what. I was in a little rush when coming up with this solution, so some of the stuff done here is pretty messy. I don't really know whether or not I could actually recommend that anyone else do this, but it did work. The most important thing to remember here is that you can easily damage your DVD player beyond repair while trying to perform this replacement. Further more this device uses AC power which could very well kill you if you aren't careful. That said all of these steps were done with the power cord unplugged. Don't perform this replacement unless you are completely comfortable working with these kinds of electronics, you are literally taking your life into your own hands.

 

 

Because of the clicking sounds the drive was making I had a feeling it was probably an issue with it, luckily LiteOn uses one of their regular IDE drives in this DVD player. I just happened to have a spare LiteOn DVD-ROM drive I wasn't using so I figured I'd see if it worked as a replacement.

The first step is getting off that tray bezel, so eject the tray and lift it off the tray. This makes it sound easier than it actually is, you'll have to pull it off from the bottom up and it can be a chore.

You'll have to remove the broken drive, so take out the 4 screws that hold it to the chassis. You should also remove the screws that hold in the metal bar going over DVD drive and take that out as well.

So here's the drive I had. It's also a LiteOn and I bought it from NewEgg.com about a year ago, I don't think it's manufactured anymore, but it looks a lot like this one. My guess is you could probably use any LiteOn drive, but one thing to note here is that this drive is very short, just like the one that's being replaced.

We'll have to get the front and tray bezels off so use a paper clip to pop the tray out and get the bezel off. Then use the clips on the sides and bottom of the drive to get the front bezel off.

Now turn both of the drive over and take the screw off of the bottom panel of the new drive. Once you get the panel off you'll see a plastic lining stuck the the bottom of it, remove that too.

Take all of the sticky pads off of the bottom of the old drive and place them in the same positions on the new drive.

Here's where this gets messy. You'll want to take a pair of pliers and bend back all of the metal flaps on the sides of the bottom of the drive. They should be bent so that they make about a 90 degree angle with the rest of the drive. In addition, you'll need to bend one of the flaps back and forth until it comes off. If you're facing the front of the drive and it's upside down, it's the one to the front left (not removed in the above picture, look below). You could bend all of these flaps off if you want, but it would take some time.

To protect all this circuitry from these metal flaps you'll need to cover them with electrical tape. Also, take that plastic lining you pull off the bottom of the drive and tape it down as shown. The third picture shows the flap that was to be removed in the step above. Now get the drive into the chassis and in the position the old drive was in.

This picture shows the original drive tray (on top) and my modified drive tray (below). I used a pair of needle nosed pliers and a small pair of scissors to remove the excess plastic. The tray bezel will not fit on the tray unless this plastic is remove. After it's gone take the bezel and fit it onto the new tray (this is also difficult, be careful not to crack the tray while you're doing it).

Ok and the last step. This is actually necessary to keep the drive pressed firmly to the bottom of the chassis. This is a folded up piece of tissue that is to be stuffed in between the front bezel of the chassis and the top of the drive. Like I said, some of this fix is messy, but it does work. Be sure to push it in pretty deep (maybe with the needle nose pliers?) so it doesn't block the chassis cover.

And here we have results, good as new!