CDRW-dvd rom

[Jamesdixon719]

Hello everyone and thankyou in advance if you can help me with my problem. I am having trouble with my cdrw-dvd drive on my computer. Its not reading any kind of disk what-so-ever. I have tried cd-r, cd-rw, dvd, and audio cd's and no luck. When I place any CD in the tray and close it, and then goto my computer, the the cd disk icon it just sits there "spooling". I makes sounds like it reading the cd, but it never comes through. It just sits the until I eject the CD tray. I have deleted the driver and restarted my computer, then re-installed the driver ( my computer does this automatically because this cd drive need no driver for windows xp).. What can I do, is this drive just physically broken? I have a very limited budget so I hope not.
Thankyou again very much for your help
My info is as follows;
Toshiba Satellite 5105-s501
Windows xp home
Matshita ujda730 dvd/cdrw
...if you need anything else let me know and I will get it to you as soon as I can...thanks again

[bombledmonk]

It does sound like the drive is bad. Almost exactly what happened to me the summer.

[JimJRJ]

Same thing happened to a CDROM of mine, it went bad so I had to replace it. Sounds like what happened to yours. You can get CDRW/DVD combos relatively cheap, like around $40 shipped from newegg.

[crossedup]

Has anything happened to it before this started happening?

Reason I asked: I worked on one a few months back, lappy drive like yours. When the owner had ejected the CD the last time before I got it for repair, the whole tray had come out. He had put it back in but it then did as you have stated.

I opened the drive up and the wire from the optics assembly to the port on the back where the motherboard cable interfaces had come loose on the inside. Plugged it back in and was good after that.

The drive was reading the disk, it had power, but it couldnt relay anything else to the computer.

Very easy fix really and worth checking before you buy another as a replacement is most likely between $100 and $200. You just need fine motor skills, decent eyesight, a steady hand and a fine phillips screwdriver.

[Jamesdixon719]

Nothing has happened like the cd tray coming out completely, but I suppose that doesn't mean that the wire didn't some how come loose. I was reading a CDRW disk and it kind of quit during the middle of an operation. It was reading the disk weird though. ( the data was taking a long time to load). I will try to look into seeing if its still connected. thnks!

[Jamesdixon719]

thanks for the advice!! I took out the CDRW drive and noticed that the connector was not in all the way. Like you had mentioned, it had power but was not sending any signal. Thanks again, this website saved me a bunch of money!

[crossedup]

Glad you got it sorted out, its a shame to throw out a good drive and some good money.