Internal Cd Drive Malfunction

My internal cd drive "ate" a cd. I have never heard of something like this occurring.

More precisely, I put a cd in the drive tray, closed the port, and, when I opened the port, the cd was gone. In other words, the cd is lost somewhere in the main processor unit.

I know that I will need to take the back off of the unit, but I am not at all certain what to expect. Can someone advise me what to expect and or what I will have to do once I have access to the drive from the back of the unit?

 

Pete,

First, I am sorry about calling you Carl in my last message about hyperlinks. I've been up since 2:00 this morning, and the C must have stuck in my mind.

Second, thanks for your information about the unit and the drive. Obviously, this will be the first time that I will have disassembled my main unit housing. I, more or less intuitively, knew that the cd would be in the drive unit, but I did not express that in my message.

The drive had been making strange noises for the last day or so, so it will probably have to be replaced.

Some people would find all of this to be a real pain, but it's fun learning more about these machines, how they work (and don't work!), and how to take them apart and put them back together again. Good practice for the future.

I will get back to the printing issue in the Other Software Forum soon.

Steven

 

Pete,

It just occurred to me that I might replace the internal cd drive with a cd dvd drive. Would that be possible as long as I had the installation cd, etc.?

Steven

 

Evan,

Thanks for your reply and the info.

 

Hi Steven,

A little more info on Evan's advice: A CD\DVD writer doesn't need drivers for the CD part. However, you will need drivers (codecs) if you want to watch a DVD on your computer; your new drive will include a disk. There's some really good free DVD Burning programs and RealPlayer (also free) is good for watching DVD's if you don't want to use Windows Media Player.