Drive not working with Toshiba laptop... HELP!!

Alright guys, here's the deal. Bought a Toshiba Tecra A8-S8514 (PTA83U-0F6021) at the beginning of July. It came with the lovely MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ-841S DVD±RW drive. After using it fairly heavily since I got it, the Matshita is basically dead. It won't read DVDs worth a crap anymore, the audio is all choppy when I try to play a movie. I can't make backups of my DVDs anymore. It fails on every attempt. It's shot.

I bought a PIONEER DVR-K17 to replace it. Connection in the back of the two drives are identical. Drive mount rails fit perfectly on the Pioneer. Seems all happy and ready to go. Well, I put the Pioneer in, it opens up when I hit the eject button. I put a disc in, it spins up like its going to read it, then spins down. The light comes on, the whole nine yards.

Only problem is, BIOS doesn't see the drive at all. Therefore Windows doesn't see it either. I tried updating my laptop's BIOS to the latest version, didn't make a difference. I tried pulling the faceplate off of the drive, thought maybe it was hanging up on the laptop shell, not making a good connection, whatever, no difference.

I can't figure out what's going on. Everything fits perfectly. It plugs in to the socket inside the laptop fine. I just don't get it. As far as I know, or can see on the drive, there are no jumpers on slimline drives, or at least on this Pioneer that would be causing some kind of conflict. Is there any reason this drive wouldn't be compatible? I don't know where I would even begin to look to find some kind of hardware compatibility list. This is just driving me absolutely nuts.

I really need to get something figured out here, so if I can't get it working, I can send this Pioneer back and get my money back before its too late.

Here were all the drives I had looked at before I ultimately decided on the Pioneer. Maybe one of these other drives will work if the Pioneer wont?

PIONEER DVR-K17
Lite-On SSW-8015S
Sony NEC Optiarc AW-G540A-10
Samsung SN-S082D

I also want to avoid an external drive if it all possible. It's just not practical for me. I already have an external hard drive, and that can be a bother at times, so I'd really prefer to keep it internal.

Thanks in advance for the advice, I appreciate it.

 

This is the thread that needs to be closed, not the other one.

 

I posted this because nobody was replying to the other thread at first lol