Damn you iMac! Why won't you read CDs anymore?

Millions,
So there we were, peacefully watching some DVDs on birdgirl’s iMac when suddenly, the CD drive gave up. I don’t know how else to explain it. We were watching episodes of a TV show (Lost, if you must know) and, upon finishing one episode, we ejected the CD to put in the next disc. All of a sudden, the computer refused to read the disc. No error messages, nothing like that; the computer was just no longer reading CDs.

A trip to an Apple troubleshooting website suggested a cleaner CD, which birdgirl bought, only to have her iMac refuse to read that too.

So…any ideas? Has anyone run into a similar snag? Can we avoid schlepping the computer to a repair shop? Any help would be thoroughly appreciated. I mean, we’ve got 3 episodes left, after all.

Could be that your CD drive has given up the ghost. (How old is this iMac?)

If you’re technically inclided, you could replace the drive yoorself

Some other resources worth looking at for drive compatibility etc…

http://xlr8yourmac.com/

http://www.sterpin.net/uk/imacslotinukp.htm

Oh beagledave, I was afraid I was going to have to give this thread the old self-inflicted “bump.” But you swooped in, like some sort of knight, in some sort of armor, doing something vivid in the sun.

Anyway, I’m going to browse the links you sent now, but wanted to mention that the CD drive euthanizing itself…it just seemed unlikely. We were literally watching a DVD no more than 20 minutes before it began refusing to notice anything that even resembled a compact disc. The iMac is one of those swivel-monitored G4s, maybe a year or two old. We aren’t talking one of those colorful ones or the ones I played “number munchers” on in my salad days. Still perplexed, I move now to macfixit.com.

I have now decided to fix this problem with a sledge hammer.

Because they are pieces of crap.

(from an imac user)

Although I don’t personally have an imac (G5/mac mini here) I can say with some confidence that if the quoted websites don’t fix your drive problem with their various “drive fixing” routines, it probably needs to be replaced. Having recently needed to replace a dvd-burner in my G5, i realize optical drive issues generally don’t give you any sort of helpful insight or error messages. On the positive end of things, optical drives are relatively inexpensive (as far as computer parts go).

Why does that seem unlikely? That’s generally what happens when hardware breaks:- it works one minute and not the next.