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cd not reconizing discs
- Thread starter rmh66
- Start date
You might want to delete it in device manager and let it reinstall. Might pick it back up. Might not. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
efair@atlnet.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
Try cleaning it with a disc cleaner and if this fails I am sorry to say that it probably is the drive up the creek!
They tend to last about 2 years on average 3-4 if you are lucky, but fortunately only cost £25 OEM/$35 so it's not too bad! If you are a bit handy then you could try stripping the drive and very gently cleaning the optical eye with a glasses cloth. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!
They tend to last about 2 years on average 3-4 if you are lucky, but fortunately only cost £25 OEM/$35 so it's not too bad! If you are a bit handy then you could try stripping the drive and very gently cleaning the optical eye with a glasses cloth. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!
It seems from what you say that you have a recognition problem rather than a reading one. Will it play CD audio, even though it won't transfer file data? In such a case, you may have a driver problem, or you may have to alter the controller's IRQ, DMA, OR I/O setting.
Assuming the drivers are loaded correctly and there are no conflicts, the problem is likely with the ribbon (data) cable, controller board, power supply, or the drive itself.
Although the ribbon cable is not the most likely, it is the simplest and cheapest to begin with. Make sure it is connected properly. You might even try another cable to see whether the first cable is bad.
Next, check the power cable from the power supply. If it is on a Y-splitter (that is, a cable branching off to two different drives), see if you can dedicate a cable to the drive itself. Perhaps another dedicated cable leads to a device that requires less power, such as a fan, and you could put that on the Y-splitter instead. Also, this could be a sign that the power supply itself is overloaded. Some of the newer computers come with power supplies with outputs of less than 200 watts, and you need 250 watts or more (preferably 300 watts). Check the output of the power supply and suspect it heavily if it has a low output and is supporting several devices.
However, the fault could lie with the drive controller. If you replace the drive with another (which is the next likely step since it isn't all that expensive) and it still won't work, you could see if you can trade it back in for a drive adapter for the CD-ROM drive. (Which means that maybe you should buy the drive from some place that also sells such adapters. OfficeMax, for instance, probably doesn't.)
There is an outside chance that your particular drive will not work if it is the slave to the hard drive. The problem here is that the drive detection signal does not allow the CD-ROM to properly identify itself. If this is the case--again, this is probably not likely, but possible--you might try making it a master drive on its own IDE channel. Come to think of it, despite its unlikeliness, this would also be a relatively cheap check before investing in more expensive hardware.
Assuming the drivers are loaded correctly and there are no conflicts, the problem is likely with the ribbon (data) cable, controller board, power supply, or the drive itself.
Although the ribbon cable is not the most likely, it is the simplest and cheapest to begin with. Make sure it is connected properly. You might even try another cable to see whether the first cable is bad.
Next, check the power cable from the power supply. If it is on a Y-splitter (that is, a cable branching off to two different drives), see if you can dedicate a cable to the drive itself. Perhaps another dedicated cable leads to a device that requires less power, such as a fan, and you could put that on the Y-splitter instead. Also, this could be a sign that the power supply itself is overloaded. Some of the newer computers come with power supplies with outputs of less than 200 watts, and you need 250 watts or more (preferably 300 watts). Check the output of the power supply and suspect it heavily if it has a low output and is supporting several devices.
However, the fault could lie with the drive controller. If you replace the drive with another (which is the next likely step since it isn't all that expensive) and it still won't work, you could see if you can trade it back in for a drive adapter for the CD-ROM drive. (Which means that maybe you should buy the drive from some place that also sells such adapters. OfficeMax, for instance, probably doesn't.)
There is an outside chance that your particular drive will not work if it is the slave to the hard drive. The problem here is that the drive detection signal does not allow the CD-ROM to properly identify itself. If this is the case--again, this is probably not likely, but possible--you might try making it a master drive on its own IDE channel. Come to think of it, despite its unlikeliness, this would also be a relatively cheap check before investing in more expensive hardware.
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