Grinding Noise from CD Drive

Hi Sam -

I doubt the mouse would have anything to do with the CD drive. Good job fixing that problem though.

Optical drives are known to wear over time, even when not in use. The grinding noise was probably a misaligned gear, another common problem. Sometimes the drive tray slips off its track or doesn’t feed in or out properly, and the gears don’t mesh. Usually forcing the tray in and out a few times will fix the issue.

Sometimes the drive won’t work because of gear damage or excessive dust build-up. We would normally recommend replacing the drive with a new one instead of attempting a repair. The drive itself only costs $20-$25, at least for a Double Format DVD-RW Burner, and only takes about 20 minutes to install.

I’m glad it’s working for now – let us know if it poses any more problems for you.

hunter greene Brainspiral Technologies, Inc. ————————————————————————————- hunter@brainspiral.com http://www.brainspiral.com

On Dec 29, 2009, at 5:35 AM, Sam wrote:

> Hi again Hunter: I worked nearly all last night trying to figure out what was happening to my CD drive – it was making terrible noises, and simply refused to burn or read read whatever disk I put in the tray. But then in the morning it began suddenly to work again and the grinding noise stopped. Was the problem miraculously solved, or was I just getting an early sign that the system is about to crash? Meanwhile, I discovered that my cursor mouse was failing to work well, so I bought a new one this morning which now works wonderfully. Could the old mouse, which I was using to tease my CD drive into co-operation, have been the cause of the problem in the first place? > Sam