burners failing left right and centre..

Howdy..

can someone please explain why optical drivers are so damn sensitive to being moved around ???

Over the last 2 weeks I've had a few weird things happen...

My friend's moved house and I've helped him move the PC. Transported the PC with great care (wrapped it in a blanket and put it on my car's comfy leather seats - secured properly). Since the move the Panasonic CD Burner no longer reads CDs. Bought new DVD burner after trying to fiddle with it to get it working. $60

Another friend at work moved house and again she was really careful with transporting the PC. Samsung DVD Burner no longer reads CDs. Again tryed fiddling. Moving IDE channels, set to Master on different IDE channel. Still no go so bought a new DVD Burner. $60

Yesterday, I've build a little box for my girlfriend. It's in a little miniATX case, Celeron 2.6 @ 3 Ghz. Lots of cooling. Tested it for 12 hours, burned a CD with the LG CD Burner I had in there (6 month old). All was sweet. Brought the CD to her house - CD BURNER NO LONGER READS CDS !!!

I'm quite annoyed. I've managed to install a couple of things by sharing a cd drive but now I gotta buy another one. What am I doing wrong ? Are my transporting/ packaging skills not good enough ? Perhaps my leather seats are not soft enough... F**K !

cheers
front2back

You live in austrailia, right? It's pretty warm there, no? You didn't leave the computer sitting in the warm car for a long time did you? Maybe the lense is getting messed up because of the heat? That's my best guess, I have never had your problem before...

Howdy.

The Pc's were never in the car for more then an hour. and even then they were always protected from the sun, either covered by blanket's or other things..
And at the moment it's been pretty darn cold for the last few months or so, so the sun hasn't been that bright enough to really of done anytype of damage i would of thought..

cheers
f2B

Hi f2b,

Are you getting any kind of error message like ' Incorrect Function '?

Eg ;)

Howdy..

No errors what so ever, they just sit there and refuse to acknowledge that there is a CDR inside..
on both occasions i even formatted and clean re-install of everything, still no luck. :(
i' checked for error logs but there were none relevant to the devices.

cheers
front2back

Hi f2b,

Have you tried to insert the cd before you reboot? if it works that way i may have found the solution...but i need to know what operating systems we're talking about...and have you checked to verify if the CD Auto Insert Notification is enabled?

Eg ;)

In the meantime here's a couple of sites that might help...

http://www.eio.com/repairfaq/sam/cdfaq.htm
Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Compact Disc Players and CDROM Drives

http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/cdfaq.htm
Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Compact Disc Players and CDROM Drives

Howdy..

pc 1 is running xp home, tried leaving the CDR in drive then reseting to see if it would then aknolewdge it was present, picked up the CD drive, but it would not acknowledge that there was in fact a CD in the drive.

pc2 xpmedia edition. Pretty much the same as above, but i never tried rebooting it with a cd left in the drive.
Just ripped it out and replaced it with a new one..

pc2 running suse10.0 it would detect the CD drive was there, then if you rebooted it would show up on the bios menu, but when you actually got into KDE desktop and tried to mount it there with a CD in the drive it would say it was not attached. etc etc.

i toggled the auto notification thingy to the off and on position.

cheers
f2B

Hi f2b,

The solution was for windows2000 and it was solved by changing or reinstalling IDE drive...? You'd know more about that than me.

I'll have another look around later to see if i can dig anything up.

Eg ;)

I have noticed this occaisonaly in the past - I was chatting with a colleague one day and he said leave a CD in the drive when you transport it.

I aint got a scobby-doo why or even how this works but I was never troubled by it again!

Or- take them out and then re-install them when you get to location?

1) On the 2 moves, did you use the same blanket?

2) On both moves, was there a CD in the drive while it was moved?

3) At what speed where these Unreadable CD's burned at? and what media (cheap??)?

4) Did you, instead, try to play a music CD in them? (a disc that you DIDNT burn)

5) Did you, after finding the problem, completely disconnect all cabling to the CD drives, completely disconnect the power cord from the wall and the power supply from ALL connections, all at the same time? (There is such a thing as static lock and I've solved problems by doing just what I've suggested).

6) What kind of music were you playing when you moved the computers?

:D