CD-RW drive not responding

[lcambre]

I have an older ~1999 PC that has developed a problem with its CD-RW drive. I can get it to open and close. But, when I have the CD in and try to read from it I get:

E: is not accesible The device is not ready

When I checked in the setup everything looked OK. I could even open it by selecting eject in the pulldown.

Any ideas what is up? My only idea is that it has gone bad and needs to be replaced.

For those of you that are going to suggest it: Yes I'd like to buy a new Mac to replace it, but the spare funds aren't there right now.

Thanks,

Louis

[George]

You can easily replace the internal one with another, or you could buy an outboard FW, or USB one for a little bit more. It’s not very difficult to replace one in a tower, but if it’s a notebook, just get the outboard one, especially if it’s an older notebook PC.

Most likely the drive is bad. You can try re-seating it’s ATA connector, but otherwise it probably is module change time.

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Regards,

[shred]

You might want to see if there's anything wierd in your BIOS Setup. If that got corrupted, it could cause this to happen. It's pretty rare, but sometimes happens.

Also if you get into replacing things, replace the cable too-- those go bad occasionally and they're cheap.

[mcoliver]

Work back the last thing you did to your PC, software or hardware-wise.

Or,

Maybe it just got tired and gone blind (laser won't fire up?)

I'm on my 2nd CD writer. The first one did what yours is doing. No amount of cleaning brought it back. The repair guy said he couldn't re-align the lense because the laser didn't seem to be on (?). Got fed up with it and bought another one instead since a few more repair trips would have cost as much as a new one anyway.

Oh, btw, you're not using double silver-side CD-R's, are you? But if you are, you do know which is the writeable side, right?

Good luck.

[lcambre]

Thanks for all the replies. I finally got around to replacing the CD-RW drive. I replaced it with a combo CD and DVD writer. I also added an ethernet interface and a bluetooth module. While I was at it I also bumped the SDRAM up to 1 GB. I also upgraded the OS from Win 98 to OS-X and the CPU from a 450 MHz Athlon to Dual 1.8GHz G5s. Oh and I got a new box too.

Louis

[mcoliver]

Wow! Didn't know replacing a busted CD writer would need so much upgrade.

Seriously, enjoy it dude.

[George]

Hey Louis,

You also didn’t mention the upgrades in other areas like the 900MHz frontside bus, the 7200 RPM Serial ATA drive(s), the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card with 64MB DDR VRAM and the fact that the Ethernet interface is 10/1000.

Nice one, I have PowerMac envy now. What did you do for your display upgrade?

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Regards,

[lcambre]

I'd gotten a new 17" monitor last year so I'm still going with that. I was also having trouble getting the old computer to work with the cable modem, so I decided it was time to move on.

Louis

[mcoliver]

900MHz frontside bus

Oh man! That would make my setup with a 133mhz FSB...like, an airgun in the hangun world?...