CadetChristmas

An update, for any other unfortunate souls on the internet who might have this problem! Tried for hours, nothing worked. Booted into safe mode and the drive had dropped the DVD tags completely and showed up as a CD drive in File Explorer. Googled like mad, can't find any drivers or much mention of this device. Either the DVD laser has somehow gone bad in the last few weeks or Windows 8.1 is f*cked, I can't say, but its not worth the time to test it or replace it. I've put the 2nd 650M GPU in permanently and will be buying a $30 external DVD drive for any disc needs I might have.

Hey guys! So I'm wondering if there's any software gurus out there. Or at the very least, other Y500 owners who could maybe tell me the model of their DVD drive on their machine! If they have a DVD drive anyway....Thank you in advance! And now, my post. The DVD drive on my Lenovo Y500 isn't working. BTW, whats with Windows 8.1?!? After finally fixing the never ending "limited internet" and "default gateway not available" with the bloody Intel 2230-N, now the DVD drive has somehow been crippled. The thing used to play just fine before on Windows 7, but after "upgrading" to 8.1....WELL. I'll try to explain. The computer recognizes the drive as a DVD drive, it shows up in File Explorer with the DVD icon, and it reads as HL DT ST DVDRAM GU70N in the device manager. So yes, its a DVD drive. But once I go into the properties of the device thru Device Manager, things get weird. If I right click it in device manager, open properties, and then go to the Details tab, under Device Description it says that it is a CD-ROM drive. And that's what its acting as. If I put a DVD in, it will spin endlessly and fail to read it. If I put a CD in, it plays just fine. This is effing unbelievable. I've been scouring the internet with google, bing, altavista, and I can't find anything. I've tried uninstalling the driver and letting Windows 8.1 redetect it, it just reinstalls the same driver. Speaking of the driver, it says its from 2006. Lolwut. The drive is some weird Hitachi-LG Data Storage thing and I can't find any drivers on the Lenovo website. I found something through Dell, but it didn't work when I tried to run the installer. I've tried going into the registry and deleting the Upperliimits and Lowerlimits entries, nothing. I was finding it hard to defend Windows 8.1 with all the glitches I've experienced (and with a clean install too), but this is just ridiculous. How an OS in 2014 can't properly recognize a DVD drive is beyond me. If anyone has seen this before, advice would be awesome. Or at the very least, if you have a Y500 running 8.1 with a DVD drive, and if its the SAME dvd drive, I'd love to see how its recognizing your drive.

Wow. DAMN. Thank you sir. I feel a little bit silly cause I'm sure I've covered that in physics but its been so long....yikes. I might have to take another class now so I stop feeling so dumb. Seriously, thank you for the reply and quick lesson! I'll be getting a bigger adapter straightaway. Haven't seen any on Lenovo's website, so I'll browse Ebay and try to find a good seller.

Hello! quick random post, thought it might fit here. I recently bought a second Ultrabay GT 650M, found a deal on Ebay that was too good to pass up. Might still be some left if anyone's interested, only $145! Anyway, I received a PA-1121-16 power adapter with my Y500, and it doesn't list the power output ANYwhere on it. Under output it reads 19.5V - 6.15A, and that's it. I'm thinking that I'll need a new adapter for SLI funtime, but I was wanting some sort of confirmation. So anyone with an SLI config and the proper adapter, could you possibly confirm? Thank you!

I WAS in the same boat as you guys, the Y500 trackpad just wasn't cutting it. And this is coming from an old Gateway....but THEN I turned up the sensitivity all the way. I believe all you have to do is go into the Synaptics pointing device tool, go to Ponting DEvice Properties, then go to the Device Settings tab and hit the OTHER small settings button underneath the white box listing the touchpad. Then, it'll look like a Help Menu, but you can change all sorts of crap in here. Go down to Pointing, expand it, go to Sensitivity, expand it, and then go to Touch Sensitivity and turn it all the way to "Light touch." There are plenty of other things you can turn on and off in this settings menu, and I'd go into more detail but for some reason pressing the enter key does nothing on these forums for me and I can't separate my paragraphs. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask!

Thank you sir! Yeah I've tried hitting enter, shift+enter, and even going to advanced reply but for whatever reason the cursor won't move. My formatting is destined to SUCK. Hmm, maybe its the browser. I'll switch that up. ANYway thanks again, might sound like a noobish question but I haven't flashed a BIOS before so I wanna cover all bases before ah, the main event. This is a great resource here, I'll be sure to post around! hopefully with more paragraph breaks

Hello threadnaught! And well uh. It appears I can't hit enter to start a new paragraph. OH WELL! I'm new to the forums and this is gonna look weird without any formatting so I'll try to keep it short and sweet. I have a Y500 with a single 650M and I'm interested in unlocking the BIOS for OC'ing or replacing this poop non dual band wireless card. I'm ALSO interested in getting a 650M Ultrabay, but I'm not even sure where to get those anymore. Quick question though. I've got Windows 7 installed on this Y500. Windows 8 is fine by me, but the guy I bought the laptop from disagreed haha. I noticed that in the instructions for flashing the BIOS, you mention that it contains the Windows 8 licenses, key, etc. I'm thinking this should still stay the same for Windows 7? It's a legitimate copy, and I'm just wondering if I can still used the BIOS files even with Windows 7. Thank you for any advice. Apologies for the Berlin wall of text.