DVD-Drive won't read CD's 1

[JoeAtWork]

Wondering if there's anything else I can do before declaring my DVD-drive dead.

Synopsis of problem:
Any CD I put in it can't read. I hear it whirl for a while, then nothing. I can see the drive letter (D in Explorer, but if I click on it, after a wait, it asks me to "Please insert a CD".
Device Manager says its working fine.
I tried both data CD's and music CD's - nothin.

Last time it was working:
I was looking at some pictures I had burned on CD. I started having some intermittent troubles (sometimes wouldn't read the CD, sometimes it did) - and then it just stopped working. I could read the same CD on my external drive no problem.

I tried removing the drive from Device Manager, then let Plug & Play reinstall it. No change.
I tried the following in a command window "dir d:" - it came back "The device is not ready."
I tried rebooting with my XP operating system disc in the drive to see if it would boot from it. All I got was a black screen with a cursor in the corner, until I removed the CD and Windows proceeded to boot.

I'm not a hardware person. Is there anything else obvious I could try before declaring it dead?

 

[cdogg]

Here's what I would try:

- Go out to

http://www.bootdisk.com

and make a Win98SE boot floppy with CD-ROM support. Boot from the floppy which will give you access to the CD-ROM from a DOS prompt. When you see the flashing C:\> prompt, switch to drive E: by typing cd e: (I'm assuming here that it's assigning E to your CD-ROM, but it could also be F: or further down the alphabet depending on how many partitions you have on your hard drive). Once the prompt switches to E:\>, type dir to see if it can read the contents of the CD you have in the drive.


- If that doesn't work, it's probably a shot drive, but you can pull it and place it in another PC for a final test.


CD-ROMs are dirt cheap these days, and you can easily replace it with a DVD-ROM (less than $20) or a DVD burner (less than $60) buying online. I recommend

http://www.newegg.com

or

http://www.pricewatch.com

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[JoeAtWork]

Thanks for that. Tried it, the response is "CDR101: Not ready reading Drive D:".

I realize drives are cheap these days, I was just hoping to avoid sending yet another electronic device to the junk pile.

Oh well.