CD-R/Disc Drive not working.. (Help please)

Hopefully this is the right forum. Recently my computer has just suddenly stopped allowing me to use my CD-R/Disc drive.

I have an Emachines computer, with Windows XP. 2.50ghz Intel processor, 40gb harddrive, 256mb DDR, 6 usb ports.. I have a cable router hooked up from this computer, to my parents computer.

I don't know why it stopped working, but it won't play any discs at all. I've tried every PC cd I have, along with various music CD's and it won't read any of them. It doesn't pop up any errors or anything, it just won't do anything at all. And when I try to open it manually and go to the Disc drive, it says there is no disc in the drive. I have used the AVG virus scanner (has been updated and all) and it didn't find any virus', and I also did an ad-aware and spyware scan, and I've checked through the device manager and it doesn't see any problems. The drive has been updated too, and I've checked for more updates and it says that this is the current one.

I didn't install any special programs or anything recently that I could think of that could be messing it up and conflicting with it, it just pretty much stopped working about a week and a half, maybe two weeks ago. I've been trying to figure out the problem since, but no luck. It worked fine before though, so I'm really not sure what is wrong with it.

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

Bad news first. I've taken a drive straight out of the box and had it be bad. A drive can go at any time. Device manager won't always show that a device is bad even if it is. Pretty much, if it can be communicated with, it's considered good.

Question, can you hear the drive spinning?

Suggestions: Look in your bios and on your post screen and see if the drive is being recognised by the system. Pull and reseat the cables.

Another question, how long has it been since you ran a cleaner on the drive?

 

Hi, welcome to the BBS

A lot of PCs (or a lot that I have seen) don't show the optical drives in the BIOS settings, they are loaded at startup, so you will only see them on the POST configuration screens (if you have a "splashscreen" at startup you will need to refer to the manual to find out how to see the configuration screens or it may say "Press ___ for Configuration "....maybe the Esc key). Press Pause > Enter to see the screens one at a time.

Another question is does the LED light flash 1) during startup 2) when you load a disk?

Suggest you go to Device Manager in Windows and remove the CD drive. It will be (automatically) reinstalled on reboot.

If it still does not work after reseating the connections, go into Device Manager remove the drive. Shutdown and disconnect the cables. Restart and boot into Windows. Shutdown and reconnect the drive cables.

Matt

 

Looking at my response to this and the one by mattman brings to mind a question I have always wondered and never gotten around to looking into.

Is there really any difference between un-installing a drive in windows and then disconnecting it and just unplugging the drive when powered down and booting?

 

Good Question but my belief is yes sir, sure is. Uninstall and disconnect cleans up drivers a bit more than does unplug and reboot. Case in point - try it both ways in 9x and boot to safe mode. XP is better but still has too good of a recollection. Better safe than sorry - uninstall and disconnect then reboot, does the better job of cleaning things up.

 

I was able to get it fixed. ^_^

It had just stopped working before, and the light would come on, but when trying to run a disc it wouldn't load up at all, and the light wouldn't come on for it.

I uninstalled the driver and unplugged everything, then plugged everything back in reinstalled the driver when I turned in back on, and tried what you guys said. I had opened it to put a disc in, but was having trouble closing it (and getting it open) and I noticed one of my younger siblings had been messing with it apprently, and had stucked some stickers in there, which had now been stuck in the gears and giving it a hard time closing and opening and was messing it up. I got them out with a pen though, and tried the drive using a few different discs and its working fine now.

I appreciate the replies and all the help. Thanks a lot for helping me out.

 

TOO FUNNY!!

Mayhaps we've all been there one time or another... Reminds me of when my son was using the VCR as a piggy bank...

 

Jay, optical drives do not run on ordinary drivers in Windows, they run on Windows ASPI layer drivers (some very old ones required specialized drivers). The ASPI layer drivers also run SCSI drives and ZIP drives. If the layer drivers become corrupt, you need to uninstall the hardware and remove the drives so that they can be reset.

You can read about ASPI drivers at MS knowledgebase, but they talk about troubleshooting, not really about how they work.

Matt

 

Thinkyou both for the input on ininstalling a drive!