CD Rom Drive Problems

Toxteth_OGrady

In Nero Info Tool under the 'ASPI' tab, what's the status of 'System ASPI' and 'Nero ASPI?'

:cool:

TOG

Miroslav

Toxteth_OGrady wrote:

In Nero Info Tool under the 'ASPI' tab, what's the status of 'System ASPI' and 'Nero ASPI?'

:cool:

TOG

They both say Installed properly and working properly.

Turned on PC 20 minutes ago and.............my CD worked!!! I created it! It's very temperamental, sometimes it will work if I use it when I first switch on only.

Thing is, looking at the CD in My Computer, it now says, Used 18.75MB, Free 0 MB so I think it closed it even though i said close session not CD :mad: But it's a start.....I'm going to try and add and see what happens :rotfl:

Miroslav

Won't add anything now (CD Drive not working)

Said CD was not blank, would I like to add a new volume . I said Yes.

But it went back to the old ways of getting stuck at the beginning of the recording stage

Going to defrag now, to see if it helps.

bbb_uk

Might be best. Ideally if you can restart your computer first and after its finished loading everything then close down everything that may be running before using Defrag because if you have a programme running and it access the harddrive for whatever reason then defrag has to keep stopping and restarting (I think it does remember where it was though).

Miroslav

I'll stop everything but System Tray as that has worked before. See what happens in a few hours!

Miroslav

Well after 3 hours 20 minutes of defragging, it's made no difference.

I only have 2GB left on my HD - could this be causing problems. I'm actually trying to offload some of it onto CD, hence finding out my problems

I'm gonna shove my Pics onto floppies as well as the CD. It says they are on the CD but just as back up, will put on to the Floppies, I can always delete at a later date when/if i find the CD is okay and it's just the drive, which is looking increasingly likely

bbb_uk

Miroslav wrote:

Well after 3 hours 20 minutes of defragging, it's made no difference...

I didn't think it would. Unless you can maybe borrow a writer from someone for a bit and try that (to determine if the writer is at fault) otherwise it could mean a reformat and fresh install of Windows.

Other possible but aren't that common reasons for problems with CDROM drives (assuming the drive itself is ok) is that the IDE cable itself is faulty, or motherboard IDE connector.

An easy way to determine this is swap cables with the one that your harddrive uses with the one that your cdrom drive(s) use as you should (ideally) have 2 IDE (the thin but wide grey) cables, one from IDE 0 (sometimes 1) slot on the motherboard to the back of the harddrive and the other from the other free IDE slot 1 (or 2) to the back of the cdrom drives.

Miroslav

bbb_uk wrote:

I didn't think it would. Unless you can maybe borrow a writer from someone for a bit and try that (to determine if the writer is at fault) otherwise it could mean a reformat and fresh install of Windows.

Other possible but aren't that common reasons for problems with CDROM drives (assuming the drive itself is ok) is that the IDE cable itself is faulty, or motherboard IDE connector.

An easy way to determine this is swap cables with the one that your harddrive uses with the one that your cdrom drive(s) use as you should (ideally) have 2 IDE (the thin but wide grey) cables, one from IDE 0 (sometimes 1) slot on the motherboard to the back of the harddrive and the other from the other free IDE slot 1 (or 2) to the back of the cdrom drives.

I might try a re-install of windows. I don't know anyone that could lend me a writer tbh.

I'll give the cables a go later and see what happens.

Cheers for the advice.

As i say, it's 15 months still in warranty, so could easily get someone out within 2 days, but i'm always reluctant until I know for sure, I have explored everything

bbb_uk

Does the warranty include software problems because it could still be a software/OS issue. Most warranties only include hardware related problems and it could still be software / OS related. If they only deal with hardware problems and providing they don't charge for non hardware related call-out problems then call them out.

Miroslav

bbb_uk wrote:

Does the warranty include software problems because it could still be a software/OS issue. Most warranties only include hardware related problems and it could still be software / OS related. If they only deal with hardware problems and providing they don't charge for non hardware related call-out problems then call them out.

No doesn't include Software probs. They go through it all with you over the phone first (PC Servicecall which is 0870 but when I called offpeak it cost me about £1.20 for an hour call, which isn't so bad) and then they decide if an engineer is needed.

The 2 guys that came out the previous 2 times I had problems, the first upgraded the drive and gave us free software (PowerDVD amongst others) , the second was from my local PC World and he just installed, didn't look into anything at all, just took out the old, put in the new, but he gave us a slower drive (48x down to 8x)

Just out of interest, as I d/l at 48x on old CD's, could this be a reason some of the old CD's struggle as it's an 8x drive? It doesn't explain why I can't write now though.