DVD drive not responding

I have an older eMachine I am giving away, it has a DVD drive,Win98SE,Pent. III. The last I knew or used the machine the drive worked. Now it will play a DVD movie but does not recognize Audio CD's or for that fact no CD's. I have homemade slideshows on CD's that it use to play but when inserted the light flashes on the case but when I click on the D: drive it says "not accessible ". In the Device manager it states the drive is working and I have tried to update the drivers but it also states the drivers installed are the best.Just a shot drive??????

Thanks,

quickshot

 

Try cleaning with a head cleaner - there may be dust on the head or maybe the cd head has just gone south.

 

Would a dirty head cause it to play one type of media and not another? What type of cleaner do you use? I have never tried cleaning a CD ROM or DVD drive.

quickshot

 

To check if it is a Windows problem or a bad drive, try booting to a bootable CD (a standard Win 98SE CD is bootable) or boot to a Windows startup floppy, change drives to the CD(/DVD) drive and enter:
dir
If it shows the contents of the disk, then the problem is Windows.

First troubleshooting for Windows is to go to Device Manager, highlight and "remove" the drive. It will be automatically reinstalled when you restart.

Matt

 

I have went to the Device Manager and removed the drive and shut down and it was re-installed when I booted up again.
It will not boot to a bootable CD but once booted it will play DVD movies but not CD's of any kind.

quickshot

 

Not a good sign. You could try reseating the cable connections (at the drive and the motherboard) and maybe try a different cable (swap it with the HDD cable as a test). You could try the CD cleaner (you will find them at an electronics store [RadioShack] or a HI FI store), although I doubt you will see it change dramatically if cleaning is indeed the problem.

Ask on a CD-DVD forum.

Matt

 

Mattman,

I did purchase a cleaning disk but to no avail. I have a Dr.'s appointment today in a larger town and will take the tower there for a computer shop to look at. Just did not want to travel 100 miles to a shop.
Thanks for the replies.

qickshot