CD-ROM drive issue

[spike251]

ok so have a c series lifebook with windows xp sp2, my cd-rom/dvd-rom combo drive has stopped working. it appears on boot, but i cannot boot off of it. it appears under my computer but doesnt show any files on the disk. i have another computer that i need to repair but this laptop is needed for the repair. please help me. i have searched the internet for hours and have yet to find the right driver to redownload. the device manager shows drive with no error but the drive doesnt work. i have tried:

reinstalling
your file deletion
and countless google suggestions.

please help

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[Don_HH2K]

It likely sounds that your drive has gone bad. I've seen this happen on quite a few older Dell Latitude CD drives, as well as the CD drives in the last two HP laptops I've owned. If your Lifebook is a tray loader, I've heard that using canned air gently against the lens of the drive can fix the problem temporarily, otherwise you may just need a new drive.

Can you hear if the disc in the drive spins up at all, or repeatedly spins up and down? If the drive has a status light, does the light come on for an extended period of time when you put a disc in? These are pretty good signs that your drive has gone bad. Either way, this doesn't sound like a Windows or other system problem.

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[spike251]

I can hear a slight clicking sound from it. Has spinning sounds. It has no status lights. But it still doesn't read the disk. My hard drive is loud so it's hard to tell if the disk speeds up or down

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[Mandrake]

I don't claim to be an expert with notebook computers, but if the optical drive is non-functional then you really have two options:-

1) The easiest would just be to buy an external DVD-RW drive. These are cheap and just connect to a USB port on your notebook.

2) The second option would be to have the optical drive replaced. You can check places like eBay for replacement drives for your particular model of notebook. Replacing the optical drive shouldn't be terribly difficult, but if you aren't comfortable doing it you could take the notebook to a computer shop to have it looked at.

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[alpha88]

It seems to me that it is hardware issue rather than driver problem. Looks like the lens of your drive cannot read anymore and needs to be replaced. Rather than having it repaired, I suggest you just get a cheap, external drive that you can detach anytime. Why spend on repair when add a few bucks, you’ll already have something brand new. But then, if you’re having second thoughts that it may be a software-related issue, try to uninstall the drive from the device manager, reboot, then let windows detect it and install the right drivers. Or, you could always search on driver download sites, there are countless of them in google and most of these offer cd rom drivers.

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