Just a comment about flakey hardware

I recently purchased a "certified, factory reconditioned" CDRW/DVDROM drive to replace my older regular CDRW. The new drive worked fine for awhile (or so it seemed). Then one day I put a DVD in to watch and it wouldn't play and the PC locked up. So I rebooted. Just as the desktop came up, I'd get the dreaded BSOD. Disabling automatic restart didn't help stop the reboot and I was unable to see the error message and code. I tried a safe reload of WinXP, and again, right before the desktop came up, I'd get the BSOD. I figured "what the f**k, I have 90% of my stuff saved on external drives and I've been thinking about wiping and reloading anyway" so I did just that. Formatted the hard drive, installed clean Windows. AGAIN it crashed to the BSOD right before the desktop loaded up. Thinking it was RAM, I started removing one RAM stick at a time. Still crashing. Started removing other devices (floppy drive, swapped video cards, etc). Still crashing. Ran RAM diagnostics. Hooked up a brand new 250gb SATA2 drive I had as a "just in case my 160gb takes a major dump". Still crashing. Swapped out cables. Different power supply. Finally I disconnected the "new" CDRW/DVD combo drive. Windows loaded up perfect and faster than I'd seen it in months! I hadn't disconnected the drive before 'cuz I used it to reload Windows and figured it couldn't possibly be bad if I (more or less) successfully installed Windows from it. So, I promptly returned the "certified" drive. The replacement drive arrived about a week later; also a "factory certified reconditioned" combo drive of the same brand. I put it in my tower, booted to Windows and the first thing I decided to do was pop a DVD in. The desktop loaded fine, XP detected and installed the "new" drive w/o incident. I hit the button to open the tray, the LED flashed, and the CD tray didn't open. I tried again, and again, and a fourth time. Still no open. I got the old paperclip out, pushed the tray out, hit the button and it went in OK. But it still wouldn't open. Anyway, I'm now getting a refund and will never do business with this company again. Nor am I likely to ever buy "factory certified recondition or refurbished" hardware ever again. And the second point: you NEVER know what can cause a BSOD and a Windows crash!

hd2k

PS- I apologize for lengthy and wordy post Hopefully there's a lesson or a drop of wisdom in there somewhere....

 

Glad you are getting a refund on it. I have hell with CD/DVD drives. I seem to go through one every year or so on my main computer. Crazy thing is I rarely use them. I use them for games that take the CD and burning the occasional CD .

The weird thing is I have a few old CD drives, not burners, and they work flawlessly. Kinda slow, but they work...

E