Laptop CD-ROM Problem

Hey everyone,

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop that's almost 5 years old now. I just recently reformatted and installed a copy of Windows XP Media Center and now my CD-ROM drive will not acknowledge burnt CD's... before the switch from XP it would read a burnt CD and burn CD's just fine. But after I made the switch it will try to read the CD about 5 times... firing up clicking and slowing down and then giving up and not recognizing a disc. It DOES still read regular CD's and DVD's... but if it's a CD-R or anything burnt I can't get it to recognize them at all... I am assuming the OS switch is coincidental.. but wanted to put this out there and see if anyone else had similar problems and what they did to fix it. Thanks!

 

I too believe that the o/s switch is coincidental and not the root cause of your problem simply by virtue of the fact that the cdrom does indeed read some discs.

In brief there is a difference in between burnt discs and manufactured ones. The latter actually being pressed.

I had an instance of an optical drive displaying this very problem. What I did which resolved the issue, is cleaned the laser lens with isopropyl alcohol.

This should be easy to do with a laptop, I had to dismantle my unit.

Good Luck

 

Thanks risk I will certainly give that a shot!