Okay … for some reason my CD-ROM has recently become very selective about which CDs it will play and which ones it won’t. I’m running Windows ME with a DVD-ROM which worked beautifully with everything up until about a month ago. What should I be looking at?
…I had the exact same problem with a stereo system. (Never buy Aiwa!) The CD player became very selective about what it would play, recognizing some and blatantly ignoring others, until it reached the point that nothing would play.
I took it in for repairs; it had something to do with the sensitivity of the laser eye and it being more or less misaligned. The system was thoroughly cleaned and adjustments were made. The repair worked fine–for six months. It’s now just as useless as before, and I’m $120 down.
Perhaps the root of your computer problem is somehow similar?
You too? I had exactly the same problem. Does yours do the “whirrr click…whirrr click…whirrr click <change to next cd and repeat>” thing? I never took mine to be repaired though. That really sucks, because AIWA stereos put out great sound.
Eutychus, first try cleaning the drive with a lens cleaner disk. If that doesn’t help, exercise your warranty. At my job, when we find cd drives that aren’t reading a lot of cd’s, we just replace them. It’s a hardware defect.
Joe, that is precisely what my Aiwa would do. And when I took it in, they said Aiwas are notorious for doing that–claiming it relates to the super-sensitivity of the eye. Um, whatever. My $500 stereo is now a dusty radio and tapedeck. Booooo! I’ve had two friends have your same reaction–“Heyyyyy, my Aiwa does that!” Lesson? NEVER buy Aiwa. Their CD players SUCK. (I smell class action lawsuit!)
There are (or were, it’s been a while since I’ve actually seen one) products made to clean CD/DVD player lenses. They almost surely cost less than $120 and might be worth giving a try. I would have guessed that it had something to do with the device misreading the data and getting confused about what kind of disk it was you were asking it to read, so I was going to suggest cleaning the lens even before Ruffian suggested it.
CD lens cleaners are your friend. 
Stop buying that Micro$oft shit you lemming!
:quietly takes Gund aside to explain the possible repercussions of being rude to Eutychuss55:
[sub]Smile when you say that, pardner[/sub]
The comments on lens cleaners are very good, Euty, and that solved a problem in a laptop I had.
However - one thing to note that could be a possibility in the future - to fight against the Evil MP3 Users, some CDs are no longer playable as CD Audio on computer drives. There was a thread in GD a bit ago about this (although Search is just bringing up loads of other threas about MP3s right now…), and IRL I have seen two of these new CDs that did this - the drive just gets stuck in an access loop. But they will play in a standard CD player.
So if they are CDs that played well in the past - dirty lens. If they are brand new - hmm…try cleaning the lens anyways.
Sam’s the man at http://www.repairfaq.org
For CD-Roms and CD players see this.
Note sections 4.3 and 7.2. Sam recommends against lens cleaning disks.
One basic thing to try: clean the disks that it doesn’t work on.
If you have no fear of opening up electronics (and bright enough to unplug the power cord) a basic cleaning like Sam suggests will probably do it. For the lens, remember lint free swabs (no Q-Tips!) and water-free 100% alchohol. Gently blowing dust out can help too.
…the problems with my stereo system continued after I used CD washers and a special lense-cleaning CD. It was when I was left with no other options that I took it in.
I now have a Magnavox–the only permanent solution I’ve found.
I’ve seen this tempermental (ie some will read some will not) CD drive problem several times over the years. Use of a cleaning kit strictly according to instructions only worked once. All the rest of the times it was simply incipient CD drive failure. New DVD CD drives cost approximately $60-$70 and take approx 10-30 minutes to swap out and replace.
Also, bear in mind that many first generation (say 2-3+ years old) CD-DVD drives will not read CDR or CDRW disks.
I’m sorry.
Sometimes a cd can have minor cracks in it that you can’t see & causes a flakey load. But if I try the cd in another computer & it reads okay then it should be fine. Otherwise make sure its clean on the bottom. I usually then clean the cdplayer with some compressed air. But I do that with the computer off as some compressed air cans drip a liquid. This works for dvd drives too.
and
General Questions is an informational forum and is not to be used as a place to vent your spleen about stuff you don’t like, such as platform issues.
If you don’t have something useful to add to the discussion, don’t post anything at all.
There’s all kinds of computers and operating systems out here and people will make the choices they want based on their needs and availability. Unless directly solicited for personal opinion on the matter don’t make this kind of posting and not at all in an informational thread.
Gund and Dark Prince, you may consider this a formal warning. There will not be another one.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Does that make what I did an informal warning? 