CD-Rom problem

Ok. I am having some troubles on my main Win2k box. The cdrom wont work. It never shows a cd is in the drive. (It does show that it detects a cd drive) So I tried the following:

Another working cdrom
Another IDE cable
Changing the jumpers from master to slave and cable select
Another IDE cable on the system (to the same as the one my hard drive is attached)
Removing/Reinstalling the driver

And I have had no luck. It detects the cdrom when it is attached in the BIOS. I thought it might of been a driver problem (or some program messing up the driver) until I tried to reformat and it could not detect the cdrom from the Win 2k boot disks. I can hook up hard drives to the system and it detects them with no problems.

Its a 1.3 Ghz AMD Thunderbird processor on a no name (that I can see through the window - but I dont have it apart) motherboard.

Lastly, it just died within the last week and a half. It was a totally working system before then..

Can anyone suggest anything? I am about ready to chuck this computer out the window...

I have had this problem before. Most likely if it detects the drive, and when you put a cd in and it looks like it trying to read but doesnt, meens that the reading device on the cdrom is broken or needs cleaned. To make sure it is not a windows driver problem try booting from it. If you cant boot from it and its detected at startup, the problem is usually with the cdrom's hardware.

Quote:

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Originally posted here by EaseZE
I have had this problem before. Most likely if it detects the drive, and when you put a cd in and it looks like it trying to read but doesnt, meens that the reading device on the cdrom is broken or needs cleaned. To make sure it is not a windows driver problem try booting from it. If you cant boot from it and its detected at startup, the problem is usually with the cdrom's hardware.

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Did try booting from it and it could not detect the cdrom drive in the Win2k setup. (Off of the floppy boot disk install) I havent tryed that with the other cdrom though... I will have to try that.. I did also try switching out the drive, as I mentioned in my post above.

Edit: Also, a third cdrom drive that I put in works. So I might just use that for a little while...

Hi CXG,

Try the original drive in another machine, and try running a CD cleaner in it at least three times. They are rather susceptible to dirt I'm afraid.

They are also susceptible to failing as well, I would say that CD Drives are the most common components that I have had to replace or at least thoroughly clean, and that is by a factor of some 2x!!!

Good luck.

Go to Wally-world, plunk down 10 bucks and some change for a lens cleaner. It doesn't take a lot of dust to make your lense go bye-bye. This may or may not solve your problem, but IS a possible (and cheaper) alternative to just buying a new drive.

I will try getting a lense cleaner. Thanks for you help!

you can git a cleaner for about 10 bucks or goto newegg and git a cdrom for 13