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General discussion

CD Drive Woes

by timwerx Sep 6, 2007 5:32PM PDT

I have several machines with CD drives that just sit and blink when a disc is put in. The program/function list does not open, and if you go to the drive in My Computer, right click on it and go to "auto play" (or whatever it is in English -- I work with Japanese machines), none of the options on the list is selectable. The drive won't/can't read the disc.

Should I be looking for a software problem or hardware one?
(5-year old IBM ThinkCentre w/XP Pro SP2)

Thank you.

Discussion is locked

4 Posts

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I'd start with ...

by Kees Bakker Sep 6, 2007 6:11PM PDT

replacing one of those drives with a known good one. That would answer your question in a few minutes.

Kees

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Yes it would....

by timwerx Sep 6, 2007 6:41PM PDT

Yes.... that would do it. I was hoping there might be an easier experiment.

Thank you.

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Not really difficult.

by Kees Bakker Sep 7, 2007 6:31AM PDT

Open the case.
Disconnect power and data cable.
Connect power and data cable to another drive. No need to physically replace it (yet), of course. Just use the cables.

Even easier if you've got a spare connection (i.e. don't use all 4 available IDE-drives. Then all you've got to find is some power plug. After rebooting you'd see the new drive with a new drive letter.

Kees

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Many Thanks

by timwerx Sep 7, 2007 10:08AM PDT

I'll give that a try. Thanks again.

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