CD-ROM Drive recognised but not reading

[M4rkuk]

I am having a problem with an old AMD Athlon 450 PC. I am running Win98 on it. Upto a few days ago it was running and reading CD-ROMs fine but now it will not run them.

It will occasionally start to run a program but it will freeze shortly after starting and I have to stop it running with Windows Task Manager.

It will eject the tray from the drives drop down menu.

It will change the drive name to the name of which ever CD is placed in the drive but it will not run it. It will not display the drive name of a particular CD if the CD is in situ when the PC is booted.

If I try to start it 'manually' via the RUN command it says "No CD-ROM in drive, Retry or Cancel".

I've checked all cables are secure and tried changing CD-ROM drives but same again.

Everything else seems OK but it just will not read CD-ROM's.

Could this be a PSU problem ?

Grateful for any help/advice.

 

[ski]

I doubt whether a bad PSU will cause this. But I've been wrong before.

But before going in that direction, go into BIOS, and make sure the secondary(IDE 2) controller is enabled(assuming the CD-ROM drive is connected to it).
If it is, then open Device Manager, and make sure there are no problems with it there.
If the controller is ok in DM, then disable DMA in the drive's Settings in DM.
If no luck, then remove the drive from DM, restart, and let Windows recognize it and reinstall its drivers.

If that does not work, then restart with a Windows boot floppy inserted, select 'Start with CD-ROM support', press Enter, and the floppy will load the DOS driver for your CD-ROM drive.
After the driver is loaded, look for your CD-ROM drive's letter at the top of the screen. It should be D, or E, etc.
Assuming it's D, at the A:\> prompt type D and press Enter.
At the D:\> prompt type dir, insert a CD into the drive, and press Enter.
If you cannot see the contents of the CD, then there's a hardware problem, i.e., bad IDE cable, bad power cable, or bad or disabled IDE controller.
If the CD-ROM drive is connected to the secondary(IDE 2) controller, then connect the drive to IDE 1(make sure that the drive's jumper is set to Slave). If that works, then IDE 2 is bad.
If no luck, then connect the drive to a different power cable.
If no good, then try a different IDE cable.

 

[BadBigBen]

I would also reinstall the chipset drivers for your system... also run SFC to check for your system files for corruption (have W98SE cd ready for this)...

Ben

 

[danomac]

I had my old 12x CD-ROM do this to me a couple of weeks ago. I used it a fair bit so I guess I just burned it out. If reinstalling the Windows drivers and checking cables don't help... it's probably at the end of it's lifespan.

Needless to say, I have a 52x drive in my old computer now.

D

 

[M4rkuk]

Tried everything Ski mentioned for both my old CD-ROM drives but I think Danomac hit it on the head....they've just had it.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

 

[franklin97355]

Have you tried cleaning the drive?

 

[cdogg]

Two clean methods:

Quick Clean: The safest method involves using a can of compressed air and doing a couple swift sprays all around the inside of the CDROM drive. Be careful not to touch anything with the straw-end of the can, and keep each spray short and sweet.

Thorough Method: Go out and buy a cleaner that's officially rated for CDROM or DVDROM drives. Scotch and Maxell make two decent ones.


Also, try moving the CDROM to the other IDE channel in your PC. It wouldn't hurt to clean out Windows in the process. Go to these two links for some ideas:

click:

http://www.geocities.com/cc210026/spywareinfo.html

click: faq615-3144

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle

For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here: faq219-2884

 

[ski]

You can also install the drive in a different system, and if it does not work there either, then it's probably bad.

 

[M4rkuk]

Thanks for extra info guys.

I'll try them all but it will take me a few days.