CD drive not recognizing disc

[lilart]

My CD drive does not recognize a CD in it as it usually does. It displays the window with "please insert CD in drive" when there already is a CD in the drive. I've tried blank CDs and CDs with files on them. I've never had trouble with this drive before. What could have corrupted it. Any help will be appreciated. lilart

 

[Rollin' Rog]

I had this problem just yesterday and was all but convinced the DVD-ROM (in this case) had simply gone down for the count. It happened after PowerDVD froze on viewing what may have been a smudged disk and I had to forcibly power off the computer.

Anyway, I did a "system restore" and low-and-behold all was well again.

So in this case it was definitely some registry corruption.

I had not tried removing the disk from the Device Manager and rebooting -- but that was on my list.

That and a commercial lens cleaner for the laser.

To run System Restore, go to Start > run, enter msconfig and Launch System restore and choose a date when it was working.

These can be undone if not helpful.

 

[lilart]

Thanks for the information. I may have to go back a week or more, as I'm not sure when I used that drive last. I'll sure give it a try. Thanks again, lilart

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Good luck -- it's possible that the results of System Restore were purely coincidental -- and that the real problem was that the laser had picked up a bit of the grease smudge that was apparently on the disk.

It might simply have cleaned itself after a few more tries.

 

[lilart]

I did the system restore three times, starting with 1 week ago, then 2 weeks, and then 3 weeks ago. When I ran the restore the 4th time, the following message appeared after I entered the restore date: "Changes made to F:\ after this point cannot be reversed because the drive was either excluded from System Restore monitoing or was turned off or removed".
Is this a problem? The F drive is my external hard drive that I have had for over a year. Was I supposed to turn it on while running the system restore? This message did not appear in the 3 previous runs of system restore. Should I ignore it, or should I refrain from using the system restore?

 

[Rollin' Rog]

Not sure why F drive would even be involved unless you had installed programs running from it. In any event if you have tried several, with no luck -- I don't think any further tries will help.

Have you tried removing the Drive from the Device Manager and rebooting?

Given what you have tried it is looking like a hardware problem. You might try a commercial lens cleaner, but the success rate with these does not seem good.

 

[lilart]

thanks for the suggestions. I'll try that one too. lilart