CD drive repair

Does the computer still see the drive, but cannot see the actual CDROM?

If so, running a lens cleaning CD (they have a small hairy bit that knocks dust of the laser lens) or manually cleaning it with a small soft brush can work. I've revived the odd one like that.

You don't say what OS but googling "missing cd drive xp" gives this as the first hit

Is the cd drive recognized by windows? If a yellow exclamation mark then try deleting driver and reinstalling. If not recognized by windows then is it recognized by bios? If so, then looks like windows driver problem, if not the it is likely to be a hardware problem, either cd or motherboard. Test by substituting known working cd is a good starting point.

I had a similar issue recently with a laptop recently where the southbridge chip soldering to the motherboard was dodgy. DVD drive was not recognized unless I pressed on the laptop case at a particular point during boot. Once recognized during boot then it continued OK.

Regards Bruce

Most likely it is the CD that is defective. Just change it, they are cheap enough. Have a look at eBuyer. The only thing to note is if your PC is IDE or SATA (if you are not sure how to tell, just ask). Make sure you get the right one.

A mate of mine suddenly couldn't see his 2nd hard drive, it'd been fine for months & months. I suggested he shut down, unplugged the ide cable, fully reboot, shutdown, reconnect cable and reboot. Its been working ever since.

My father used to say that 90% of electrical problems are mechanical. Connectors are often the issue. Try disconnecting and reconnecting. Rebooting Windows is always a ggod idea.

Tried that and it said the media in the drive was not readable. Tried it with 2 x CD's which work fine in SWMBO's PC (Vista).

Thanks anyway.

Yes

No yellow Exclamatio mark

I wouldn't know what bios was I'm afraid. Some kind of plant food? :-)

I'm going to try cleaning as soon as I find the cleaning thingy, plan B is to replace, how do I tell if its IDE or SATA?

IDE - 2" wide ribbon cable SATA - ordinary cable

Inside the tower or outside?

Sorry to be such a numpty.

is this an external "portable" CD drive perchance?

Jim K

On Sun, 22 Aug 2010 12:34:02 +0100, The Medway Handyman boggled us with:

Inside.

It'll be coming out the back of the CD drive. IDE - flat, wide grey with a flat wide connector on the end. Sata - thin cable with a small connector.

This is SATA:

No, inside the tower.

Sorry TMH, I thought Windows didn't recognise the drive.

Assuming windows still sees the drive and gives it a drive letter, but it just won't read any disks, the simplest and cheapest solution is usually to bin it and replace with another.

Not the cheapest. but an ok drive:

IDE version:

If you really want a bog standard CD ROM (i.e. read only, no DVD compatibility) you will have to look at second hand probably. (in fact I have a new unused IDE CD ROM drive on the shelf - yours for the price of postage!

Ever since I bought a cd/dvd writer drive (Philips) for our pc, XP's Explorer has claimed there is no disc in the drive. I have asked many questions about this but never found out why. Anyhow, what I have found is that if I open Windows Media Player, and use *that* to browse to the disc it is then seen along with all its tracks. After having 'found' the disc in this manner I can shut WMP and Explorer then sees it in the normal way. I have no idea why. Perhaps it will work for you.

Worth a try.