Cdrom Drive suddenly doesn't read CD's?

r-karsk

n00b
Joined
Jan 24, 2005
Messages
58
Hi everyone. I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong board as I'm quite unsure where I should have posted this. Feel free to move the topic if it is in the wrong place. Thanks.

Description of the problem:
OK. Well, I don't often use my cdrom/writer but when I do its usually for a good reason. This time, it was installing my copy of Mechwarrior 2 so I could take a drive down memory lane. Anyways, I pop that bad boy in and my cdrom drive starts spinning, and then it spins faster and faster and faster until it finally slows down. I look at my D drive and its empty. I try a different CD, same thing happens. I try a music CD, same thing happens. I open up my PC, double check that my HD is set to master and CDRW set to slave. Check. So, instead of having both drives on different cables, I put them on the same one. Restart the computer, pop in a couple different CD's, and still nothing.

Now, I recently (yesterday) downloaded a registry cleaner and used it. There were no problems with anything else after I used it and restarted, although I suspect it may have done something to my cdrom because I didn't test it before/after the reg cleanout. So I decided to restore all the deleted registry entries (the program has this feature). I restart my computer and BAM, now my CDROM doesn't even exist! Windows doesn't see it at all. I restart again and check my Bios, my bios sees the CDrom, but when its detecting the drives at the beginning I noticed some exclamation marks and around four numbers after the CDroms name. It goes by the screen so fast that its impossible to catch exactly what it says.

Update - OK, so i've put the CDRom and HD back on seperate cables, and i've changed the power plug that the CDrom uses to no avail. I do, however now see my D drive again, but the cdrom drive still doesn't play cd's.

Recent changes: Other than the Reg Clean, none.

Computer Specs:
AMD64 3000+
Maxtor 20gb 7200 IDE
Geforce 6600GT AGP
MSI K8N Neo Platinum (S939)
OCZ Performance 512mb PC3200 DDR
Sound Blaster Audigy LS
LG 16x10x40x HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8160B CDrom/Burner

Operating System: Windows XP SP2
 
Delete the drive from device manager, reboot, and see if XP's hardware autodetect picks it up
 
Drake said:
Delete the drive from device manager, reboot, and see if XP's hardware autodetect picks it up

Windows did pick up the cd drive and install the drivers but it still doesn't read cds.
Thanks anyway.
 
Sounds like an aspi layer problem to do with windows XP.

Try putting in a bootable cd into the drive (windowsxp cd for example), set your bios to boot from the cdrom drive, and see if it does indeed boot from the cd when you restart.

If it does, then you'll know the cd drive is physically fine and that you're facing a software problem.
 
I had this happen not too long ago with a brand new drive. It just started reading everything like it should after a couple reboots. I have no idea why, I've never had it happen before and it hasn't had any issues reading a CD or DVD since. Strange.
 
I have two drives and had a similar problem with both not reading or burning cds.

The problem turned out to be the nforce4 drivers I installed on my nforce3 board.
I uninstalled the nforce4 drivers and installed the nforce3 5.10 drivers and everything went back to working condition.
If you are using nforce4 or beta chipset drivers that can be the problem.
 
nancyboy said:
I have two drives and had a similar problem with both not reading or burning cds.

The problem turned out to be the nforce4 drivers I installed on my nforce3 board.
I uninstalled the nforce4 drivers and installed the nforce3 5.10 drivers and everything went back to working condition.
If you are using nforce4 or beta chipset drivers that can be the problem.

I have an nforce 3 chipset, i'll get nf3 drivers and see what happens. Thanks.
 
How old is the drive. It could be the drive is defective or just plain worn out...
 
I had a 3month old DVD-RW drive do exactly the same thing, slowly degenerated into not being able to read anything. Was just defective so i got it replaced under warranty, never did find a way to fix it. From the specs, it looks like it just might be on the end of its tether.
 
darktiger said:
How old is the drive. It could be the drive is defective or just plain worn out...

Hmm, probably 2-4 years old. How long do CD burners usually last?
 
Back
Top