problems with my cd-rom drive??????

k my cd-rw/dvd drive is not working 4 sum reason, this is the 1st time i ever had problems, each time i put in any disc it wont load it, i put in dvds,audio cds, data cds original music cds, etc and still it wont load my comp doesnt load it up, i go 2 itunes and it doesnt say cd, i go 2 windows media player and still, i put in a dvd and still, and then i tried burnind a data cd and when 2 test it on another comp, nothin showed up, im running on xp home ed. ;my cd drive has never had any problems before plz HELP ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

 

I must ask, have you check the cables? jumpers? If no, check this first and see if everything is connected right and jumpers are set properly.

If you have checked and everything was fine then chances are your CD drive is going bad and it's time to replace.

 

at least you know it has power as it opens and closes... check in device manager that the pc is actually picking the cd-rw/dvd up. If not then like bjgarrick suggested, check the cables and jumpers.

 

There is a known problem ( I couldn't find the link just now) in windows XP and 2000 that can cause the CDROM not to read any CD's after the uninstall of some specific software. To determine if this is the problem, try booting a CD from system startup. If it boots the CD then the drive is probably good. If it doesn't boot the CD then the drive is likely bad. If you don't have a bootable CD, try booting an old floppy that has a CDROM driver on it like an old Win98 boot floppy. Boot with CDROM suppot and see if it can read a CD.

 

Have you recently updated the drivers...maybe through windows update and not even realized it? Try rolling back the drivers to see if that makes a difference. I know with my CR/RW drive I can't use the IDE drivers that came with my new motherboard as I get similar behavior to what you describe.

 

i started to have the same problem with my CD/RW and what i did to fix it was opened it and cleaned the laser. BUT that is the very last thing to try because you can really mess up your cd/rw if you dont know what you are doing.

 

I do agree a good cleaning can sometimes do wonders to a messed up optical drive. I have a sony cleaning kit where you place one drop of solution on each brush and let it do it's thing.

@ mil...when you insert a disc do you hear normal activity like it's spinning or do you get just the opening and closing of the drawer?