CD ROM problems

J

James Sherry

Guest
I am in the middle of doing a course and my D drive is playing up. When I load a CD the little light flashes underneath the drawer but it does not spin quickly.

When I click on my Computer and then D Drive a window pops up with the following text:

"D:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready."

I would appreciate help on this as I am "stranded" without this facility.

Thanks.
 
Did it ever work?
What, if anything, changed (e.g. new software/hardware etc. installed) between it working and failing?
Have you tried more than one CD?
What sort of CD are you inserting (pre-recorded CD-ROM or music, CD-R, CD-RW...)? Presumably it's not a DVD by any chance?
How do you know that it's not spinning (quickly)?
 
CDROM

Did it ever work?

Yes, up until today.

What, if anything, changed (e.g. new software/hardware etc. installed) between it working and failing?

Installed Adobe Photoshop and did a virus scan on the CD first.


Have you tried more than one CD?

Yes, including a music CD.


What sort of CD are you inserting (pre-recorded CD-ROM or music, CD-R, CD-RW...)?

A CD-R with course work on it including pictures and PDF files.

Presumably it's not a DVD by any chance?

No

How do you know that it's not spinning (quickly

I can't hear it like I used to be able to.

Thanks in advance.
 
CDROM

Thanks for the feedback. Seems odd. I can't imagine that installing Acrobat would have caused this. Did the virus scan on the CD work OK? If it did then did anything else change between this and the drive failing? Hardware can fail out of the blue but it's not as common as people might think and can often be related to rough handling etc. However if the light is on but the drive does not seem to be spinning then it could well be a hardware malfunction. If you are using Windows NT/200/XP then you could check the Event Log in case there are any hardware faults reported there. Another step might be to check cables etc. to make sure that there's no problem in that area. If you are not comfortable with doing this yourself then get somebody who is on the case. At the very least disconnect the power when opening the PC and poking around! Another thing I'd try would be to try another CD drive and see if that works but that might not be an option and you probably would have tried it at this stage if it was!
 
Re: CDROM

go to my computer.

right click on the CD rom drive and view properties.

If it gives the properties it will work after that.

I have the same problem now and then and this worked.
 
unregistered user,

Did the virus scan on the CD work OK? Yes, it did.

I have now started using the E Drive (CD -RW) and it is working OK but will not play any music CD's - should the E drive play sound?


If it did then did anything else change between this and the drive failing? No


getoffthepot,

I tried this and no properties are displayed.


Thanks both of you for your ongoing help.
 
> Did the virus scan on the CD work OK? Yes, it did.

Seems very odd that the virus scan (of drive D: presumably?) worked but thereafter you could not access the D: drive.... Have you checked your PC for parasites etc. just in case...?



> I have now started using the E Drive (CD -RW)

So presumably you have a CD-ROM drive (drive D:) AND a CD-RW drive (drive E:) ? At least this gets around the immediate problem in that the CD-RW drive is also a CD-ROM drive and can read CDs.

> and it is working OK but will not play any music CD's - should the E drive play sound?

What are you doing playing that jungle music when you're supposed to be studying!? :lol The CD-RW drive should be able to play music CDs as well but chances are that only the CD-ROM's sound output is connected to your sound card and if you want to use the CD-RW instead then you will need to reconfigure things internally in your PC.

Apart from that most software CD players should give you an option to choose one of any number of CD devices attached to the PC.

Does this make sense?
 
Apart from that most software CD players should give you an option to choose one of any number of CD devices attached to the PC.

A music CD will actually play but just with no sound. When you say that I will have to reconfigure things internally, I am going to check the cables on the CD ROM inside the CPU tomorrow so I might aswell fix the sound to the CD-RW if I cannot find a fault with CD ROM.
Is this difficult to do?
 
There are two issues here:

(1) Why the CD-ROM drive (drive D:) is not working - and we haven't gotten to the bottom of this. This will need more investigation.

(2) Why the CD-RW drive (drive E:) doesn't emit any sound. AS I mentioned this is most likely because only the CD-ROM drive is connected to your sound card. It should not be too difficult to change this so that the CD-RW drive is connected instead so that you can use that for the moment for sounds. However if you have never opened up a PC and reconfigured hardware then I would recommend that you get somebody who has to do it. If you do it yourself make sure to unplug the power first and be careful when poking around. What you need to do is to disconnect the sound cable from the CD-ROM drive and attach it instead to the CD-RW drive. This connector is usually the smallest one attached and carries about 4 thin wires. Do not confuse it with the IDE cable or the power input although you may need to disconnect these to gain access to the sound cable.

See here for more info:

[broken link removed]
 
CD ROM problems - help!

Thanks for the previous advice.

I have fitted a second hand D Drive and it won't work. When I put a CD in I can hear it spinning but nothing comes up. I have gone into My Computer and the E Drive icon has disappeared! The D drive icon now operates the E drive ( CD-RW).

How can I:

Get the new D Drive to work?

Restore the original settings ie D Drive icon to work D drive and E icon to work E Drive?


Thanks again.
 
CD ROM problems - help!

OK, I believe I have to download a driver for the CD-ROM drive so I have done that from DriverGuide.com. The shortcut has appeared on my desktop as a "zip" file but I cannot seem to open it. What should I do now?

Thanks in advance

James
 
Re: Youu need

HTML Comments are not allowed

Hi Tony - same as before with your post I'm afraid... :\
 
CD ROM problems-hellllp!!!

I'm pulling my hair out here. I have fitted the CD ROM Drive, downloaded the driver, downloaded winzip, unzipped the file, restarted my PC and still nothing. In My Computer the D Drive icon still actually works the E Drive (which is the CD-RW) and there is no icon for the actual D Drive. Pleeease help!
 
CD ROM problems-hellllp!!!

Note that the drive labels (D:, E:) are just that - labels - and are not intrinsically bound to particular devices. For example, when you have a CD-ROM drive as drive D: and a DVD-ROM drive as drive E: and you disconnect the former Windows will generally remap the drives so that D: will now refer to the DVD-ROM drive and D: will no longer refer to anything. This might explain some of what's happening here? When you installed the replacement CD-ROM drive in place of the original Windows must not have recognised it (or it was installed incorrectly) so D: became the DVD-ROM drive. Does that make sense to you? With some versions of Windows you may be able to "hard code" the drive labels to specific devices. What version of Windows are you using? Note that when you installed the replacment DVD-ROM drive you should have made sure that the jumper settings (in particular the master/slave/cable select settings) were the same on the replacement drive as on the old one. Incorrect master/slave/cable select settings could explain why Windows did not detect/recognise the drive. I would be surprised if you had to install additional drivers in order to enable Windows to detect a properly installed CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drive these days.
 
I appreciate the drive remapping. The CD-RW was the E Drive but is now the D Drive etc. When I plug the old CD-ROM Drive back in Windows recognises it and D becomes E again. Within My Computer there is no icon for the replacement CD-ROM Drive.

Power is getting to the replacement CD-ROM Drive as it spins when I put a disc into it.

There were only two plugs to consider - power and a wide low profile one. There was another power cord which was less inter-connected than the one in use(it just was connected to the CD-RW power connector).

I am using W98SE.

Anything else I can try?

Thanks again for the detailed advice.
 
> There were only two plugs to consider - power and a wide low profile one. There was another power cord which was less inter-connected than the one in use(it just was connected to the CD-RW power connector).

I presume the "wide profile" one is the IDE cable. Make sure that this is oriented correctly - there may be a notch to "key" this so that you CAN'T fit it incorrectly in which case that's fine. I don't understand what you mean about the power cables but any power cable that fits should work OK.

The master/slave/cable select jumpers may need to be set correctly as I mentioned earlier. This link explains how to install an IDE drive such as a CD-ROM:

[broken link removed]

Do you know that the replacement CD-ROM drive is working in another PC OK?
 
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