computer troubles....help

[slow 2K2GT]

Ok so here it is, I am unable to burn or read with my CD-RW drive. I have updated, uninstalled, installed and rolled back the drivers. Nothing! I think that my drive is shot but I could be wrong, as all I know about computers is they go on and off. What else? When I try to burn anything my burning programs freeze up totally. The CD tray will open and close and spin a CD but it wont go any further? Any ideas? I thinkI should give it to Gomez. He certainly knows to pay riddance to stuff.

[Vampyrate]

okay, here is something that may seem a bit bold for the non-compu-nerds out there:
open up the case (either with screws holding the panel/case on, or a clip). locate where the desired part is that you want to attempt to fix (just look on the outside if it is a cd-rom/floppy drive/etc.) you will notice a connector either flat or rounded that is (16-pin if i remember correctly) that is the data (aka ribbon) cable. now that you have found that, turn off the computer if you havent done so yet. when off, disconnect the ribbon cable and reconnect it, making sure that it goes all the way in. turn on the computer and see what happens.


if that still doesnt fix it, when the computer is starting up, hold down the delete and/or F10 key(s) as soon as you star the computer. that will take you into bios. find something that says "Standard CMOS" or anything that would have the drives in, you may have to scroll through the list to find it. if your cd-rom (or whatever you are looking for) isn't in there, then you will have to turn the computer off a gain, and this time, check the power connection (4-pin connection with 2-4 wires running into your power supply... big box in the back where the power cable plugs into) and reboot and try again.

if all that doesnt work, then yes, your drive is dead and needs to be replaced. sorry for the long post, but i hope that helps

[labmixz]

or it could be a kinda retarded / old cd burner... some of the older cd burners in combination with a cheap motherboard could not communicate with the bus of the motherboard correctly when on the same IDE cable (ribbon cable) as the hard-drive... basically the motherboard didn't have enough power to communicate between the two devices so it will read fine from the cd (most of the times) but sending large amounts of data TO the cd-rw will fail...

fix for that is just put it on it's own IDE channel (ribbon cable)

also if you have alot of cold cathod's or case mods or hard drives in it... it could be the simple fact that the system is underpowered and you need a larger power supply because the motherboard doesn't have enough electricity to communicate properly to the end of the bus/ide cables... ;)

if all above (both replys to this) fail, the drive is ca'put

[BlackElantraGT]

slow, I think I'm having the same problem as you, except with my dvd-rom drive. I haven't diagnosed the problem yet, but I just assumed that the drive is bad because my computer detects the drive but it no longer reads any discs.

I thought it was wierd that it just no longer worked one day, but since it's a mechanical item there's always that possiblity of a bad drive.

I'll have to check my IDE ribbon, but I highly doubt that's the cause.

[VTElantra]

I say the drive is toast, go get a DVD burner. There only like 35 bucks online, I prefer Liteon drives my self. You can click the link in my signature, join and actually have some real professionals tell you what they think.

[slow 2K2GT]

The drive I has is a Liteon and its not that old. I got it only 9 months ago and it worked fine last week so I will venture into the suggestions that I have been given tomorrow. Thanks all and I will update.

[slow 2K2GT]

I am typing from my laptop so that should tell you how things went...lol. Well I will say this, I had CPU failure today for some reason. Time to upgrade I guess

[Vampyrate]

yeah.... i need to do the same myself. i built this computer about 3 years ago, and i think its time to upgrade the cpu and mobo

[slow 2K2GT]

Ok got my machine back. Didnt care about the CD-R drive when I found out my CPU chip was fried. So I had to do some upgrading...

FROM (dont laugh)
P4 2.0
Asus P4B mother board
256megs 113 (?) ram
Nvidia G-force 2 Mx400 64mb video card
Liteon 40x12x48x CDRW drive

TO
Asus A8N5X motherboard
AMD athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz processor
Nvidia GFX-6600 3D (PCI-E) 256MB DDR video card
1024meg DDR ram
and of course a Liteon 16x DVDRW

Man my games like no tomorrow now...Lovin it!