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What is wrong with my CD/DVD drive?

My computer is just over a year old, and it has served me well - I haven't had to format it a single time since I bought it. It came with a combo DVD-R/CD-R drive, which has always functioned perfectly. Lately I have been using the drive a lot to make some homemade DVDs. The other day, it was in the middle of burning when it suddenly started making a loud clunking noise, like the disc was being bounced around inside the drive. I got an error message, the disc was garbage, and I had to start over with a clean one. Since then this has happened more and more frequently, when I am burning or even if I am just using a game CD. Sometimes it recovers and keeps going, but sometimes I get an error and whatever I am doing freezes. The discs come out with very fine, small scratches on them - not enough to render the disc useless or unreadable, but if it keeps happening to the same disc it will eventually ruin it. Any idea what is going on? I don't want to lose any of my CDs or DVDs because of it.

Update:

The sound it is making is a clunking noise. It sounds like the disc itself is bouncing around inside the drive, like it has come off of the spindle but is being hit by it. I've never heard a noise like this coming from a drive, and I've had a lot of them.

I have heard this sound now when burning DVDs, reading DVDs, and reading CDs. I have not tried to burn a CD since it started happening.

I'm hoping someone will know what this is and it will be fixable. I just graduated from college so I don't have a lot of extra money to be buying new hardware.

Thanks.

4 Answers

Relevance
  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    If you used it frequently enough you CAN not saying that you did but can over heat and internally dammage the hardware inside the drive

    In my case my lens cracked after about 1-2 year of use

    i used the drive to make a lot of copies so i wan't supprised

    My best advice is just get a new cd-rom drive they aren't that expensive, with your functions it should cost your anywhere from $30-$70 depending on the name brand and speed of the drive

  • ?
    Lv 4
    5 years ago

    i latterly had a similiar situation, My cd/dvd tension became into no longer being detected as quickly as I placed a disk in or interior the computing device menu. I did a splash analysis on the internet and it became right into a registry blunders. some burning classes might reason this mistake. circulate to regulate panel, then gadget supervisor and if the cd/dvd drives has a yellow exclamation element next to it, then you definately've some techniques to objective and fasten it. you could ideal click on it and attempt to test for hardware ameliorations. If that doesnt paintings then you definately will could manually fix it on your registry. in case you do circulate to the registry, be careful of what you delete because you could desire to wreck your computing device. below is an internet site which would be of a few suggestions to you. desire this enables you.

  • 1 decade ago

    I don't quite understand what the noise you heard was. Is it like when the driver is spinning when the computer lags? Or something else, like when the disk sounds like it's stuck or something? Otherwise, I've never encountered such a thing and cannot help you. But check the disk compatibility and also try switching disks(the type of disk you use) and see if that works. Also perform a complete virus scan first, and make sure you have enough memory to store it on.

    If all fails, you should get a replacement, but it's better to bring it to a computer technician to figure out the problem first.

  • 1 decade ago

    Its really rare for hardware to function badly (but it happens!) Your cd/dvd drive may be malfunctioning, and maybe some small things are going wrong. You can try to buy a new one, or you can set your drive to read/write at slower speeds; you can refer to the handbook that came with your computer to find out how to do this *maybe* (some handbooks are made so badly.)

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