Samsung SV-DVD440 DVD drive problems brick almost entire system
 

Hi all,

I have a dutch Samsung SV-DVD440 (Rev.2). It's one of those VHS DVD combi models. The DVD side of the system, hovewer, has been acting up lately and it's problems have prevented me from using all but basic VHS playback functionality.

VHS playback works absolutely fine. I haven't tested AUX video and coax video, but last time I checked they were totally fine. When I start the unit and press the VCR button, I get that characteristic blue screen and all is well, playback works, fast forward/backward, everything. When I press the menu button on the remote while in VCR mode, the screen says "Voordat u begint met instellen moet u eerst de disc stoppen", which translates to "Before you start setting up, you need to stop the disc first". Thought that was pretty curious, since there was no disc present in the device. When I press the DVD button, hell breaks loose.

When I press the open/close button, the display reads "OPEN" but the drive does absolutely nothing. No noises whatsoever. Helping the system a bit manually doesn't help either. I've had a moment where I pressed open and left it for a while, then suddenly it actually popped open completely. After I pressed the open/close button again it still wanted to "OPEN" the drive, and it didn't do anything again.
When I switch the tv on and switch to DVD mode, the blue screen changes into a black screen with, 1/3rd of the screen down, a pattern of magenta colored vertical lines. The screen doesn't react to any button press.
While i was typing this, I tried opening and closing the drive after cleaning the contacts yet again. Nothing happened, until i put the machine in standby mode. I heard a few clicking noises, probably a gear skipping, and the spindle started revving up. The magenta lines gave way for some dark colorful static. I got spooked by it so I pulled the plug immediately. I tried it again from VCR mode and the same happened, but the spindle started revving up before the clicking this time. NOTE: This didn't happen before I "cleaned" the contacts!

To the best of my knowledge, this all just "started happening some day". No trauma happened to the machine, no falls, power surges, water damage or anything. The machine looks absolutely fine from the inside.

Hope I've provided enough information, really tried my best to tell every bit I know which might be important. I really hope someone can help me.

Thanks in advance,
Modkip

Addendum: After repeatedly reinserting the connectors again and again, the DVD side now gives "No signal" and the weird revving up doesn't happen anymore. After rebooting the system the whole screen became magenta instead of some stripes
the revving up happened and i let it go again, This time the drive popped open after a short while. While it was opening, the spindle revved up again. During the opening yeah. After rebooting yet again, the "No signal" returned and the revving up didn't happen. Granted, this time, I left the drive open halfway.
I rebooted it yet again, making sure the drive bay was in and the laser carriage was up all the way, This time the screen got straight magenta 1/3rd of the way down. Powering it down, the clicking began again and the revving up started, this time without the drive ejecting in the end.

So every time I reboot it something different happens...