New laptop just "ate" a DVD

[Mahdi]

I've had this laptop since the end of May.  Watched a DVD, closed it, went away, came back an hour later and the computer was completely froze.  Had to use the button to turn it on.  Restarted - wouldn't do anything until I opened the DVD drive and removed the DVD.  Did that and the computer booted up.  But the DVD was done.  Lots of circles burned/scratched into it from about the halfway point all the way to the edge.  Garbage.

With my warranty I have to ship the damn thing back to the manufacturer for repairs, and since I use this as a work laptop with work programs and confidential information on it that's not an option.  Plus, I would have no way of doing my work for those weeks it was away.

Any suggestions?  Should I risk testing more DVD's?  How much does it cost to have a new DVD drive installed?

Incidentally, I've been having a lot of trouble with my memory lately.  I have 4 gb ddr ram but the whole comp occasionally gets really laggy (especially when I am downloading torrents) and sometimes when I'm doing nothing but outlook, torrents, and windows media, I get an error that there's not enough system memory.

[Andrew]

That is bad.

Do virus scans, malware scans etc. (malwarebytes is best malware program).

I presume windows vista? Which version? 32/64 bit? No way should run out of ram often. How often do you shutdown/restart computer (not just close the lid)?

What programs you normally run? Is your systray always full of shit and takes forever to load when starting fresh? Could be a program leaking mem. Also with one laptop I fixed there was a program that was running in background corrupted using 50% CPU (1 core) nonstop which slowed it down and killed battery. No way for average joe to know that is happening or how to fix it (they just buy a new laptop...).

When you are running low on ram, do you open task manager to see what programs are using the ram? In software guide thread, try "Process Explorer" program which will give more detailed info (try vistas task manager first (ctrl+alt+delete-> start task manager I think). Find out what programs/apps are running and wtf they are all doing(ram/cpu/if you don't recognize any names). With torrents and ram, check your torrent program to see what kind of cache it is using. I set mine pretty high when testing and it used up all my ram as cache for torrent (which I partly wanted as I wanted to reduce small writes to hard drive). Something like 10mb cache should be enough (or anything under 100mb really).

About DVD drive, maybe burn your own DVD's to play with (get burnable dvd-r and then burn and play for a while). Instead of replacing DVD drive inside laptop, you'd probably be better off spending $50 on an external DVD drive. I'd expect replacing the drive not under warranty would cost more than the laptop(dvd drive) is worth. Cheapest at newegg is $45 free shipping (so like $50 to your door). And with external you can use it with other computers as well (if your laptop dies). Not sure how well external usb works, but I presume you can watch dvds otherwise I doubt they would be sold.

More information you give more answers can be given. :)

As many computer specs and software specs (list of running programs/processes). Maybe running ccleaner to get rid of temp files and old registry might help clean some stuff (backup your important stuff to usb stick first). Uninstall crap you don't use/need.