Disk Drive Trouble

[Gray Fox]

Hi
For a while now I've been experiancing a problem with my D Drive,

The problem is that when I place a disk into it, the computer often locks up, forcing me to re-start. This problem occurs with almost all disks.

Help would be appreciated and if you need any additional info, i'll be glad to give it to you

[Mr Flibble]

I take it your D: drive is a CD-ROM? If it's having problems when you put a disc in then it is probably trying to read the disc but is being prevented in doing so either by something on the lens or the head not tracking properly. Have you tried cleaning the lens with a CD lens cleaner? You should be able to get one from most computer or audio stores.

When you put a disc in the drive can you hear it spinning up? If there's no sound coming from the drive, then it's probably not worth fixing, especially considering the price of CD-ROM drives.

[HighLordDave]

In my experience, a physical problem with the drive usually does not lead to the OS locking up. There might also be something wrong with the IDE controller or the driver. What kind of drive is it? CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-RW? What OS are you running? If you're running a Windows 9x OS and have a DVD-RW or CD-RW, you may be having a driver issue.

The best test for this would be to swap out with a known good ODD. If the replacement drive works fine, you've got a bad drive. If the replacement drive also locks up your system (or if that drive works in another machine without problems), I'd also look into replacing/repairing the 1) IDE cable, 2) OS and 3) motherboard (in that order).

[Xandax]

if it is because the drive can't read the CDs anymore it can block for Win95/Win98 OS's on some occasions (I've had it happen).

But usually it would give a blue screen, or a dialogbox stateing there is no access to the drive if it can't read it.
It shouldn't block indefinately unless something like HLD is suggesting.