A few days ago I used it to install a game and it worked fine, then without logging out or rebooting some time later in the day I tried to use it to install another one on another disk but it did not see the disk. It’s been that way ever since. It does not see any disk I put in it whether it’s a cd or dvd. The light just comes on for a little while then goes out.
I completely physically removed it from the system and reinstalled it but no change.
The drive shows in the bios properly and in openSUSE say for example in Kinfo center or the Yast hadware information.
Anybody have any idea what happened to it?
I expect it’s dead. It would just be interesting to see what anybody has to say about the reason.
It sounds as if dead. You might try wiggling any plugs connecting cables to the system. Perhaps there’s a dirty connection.
I have an older computer with a dead CD reader - it turns out that it can read DVDs but not CDs. It isn’t worth the cost of replacing, so I am managing to live without. And it is an old enough computer that the BIOS does not support booting from a USB. But, fortunately, PLOP boot manager allows me to still boot a USB, so I use that for any installs.
On 2013-03-04 23:46, Scott Swinyard wrote:
>
> Yeah I tried the first disk again too but the dvd isn’t much good if
> that’s the only disk it will read though.
>
> He he.
You mean that the unit can read that particular DVD, but not others?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
So DVD drives and all computer hardware really works great until at a time and place of their choosing, they break and stop working. The time and place that it breaks, has nothing to do with the last time that it worked, save that it was powered up at the time. You have but one chance left and that it is dirty. Power up the drive, get the bay to open up and use duster spray or just blow into the open drive as hard as you can. Do it several times as dust can happen to collect on the read LED and stop it from working. I have had this happen many times. I have also had several optical disks all smudged with finger prints as well. You should examine every disk you have used to test the drive as this can cause more than one disk to fail when not really bad. Dirty fingers are very common, so look again to make sure. In the end, optical drives are very cheap (except a few on laptops), they fail more often than you think and if you can find no other cause for it not to work, its time to buy a new one and stop screwing around with a bad optical drive.
Yes I do push the door but right now it doesn’t work either way…
I blew air into it with a vacuum cleaner hose (which may not have been a good idea) but it didn’t help. Then I took it out and inspected what I thought was the laser and mirror and both were shiny clean. Since that was all I knew how to do I have essentially given up but thought I would give posting here a shot.
Let me say that optical drives detect the drive tray moving in and will take over and close it. Since it is mechanical, rough handling such as frequently pushing in the tray may not be a good idea, but pushing it in ever so often is not likely to cause it to become misaligned. So, treat it gently and lose no sleep if you forget ever so often.
On 2013-03-06 00:26, jdmcdaniel3 wrote:
>
> vazhavandan;2532226 Wrote:
>> From what i heard i we need to push the door to close the drive then it
>> means that the read/write head will be misaligned with the media
>
> Let me say that optical drives detect the drive tray moving in and will
> take over and close it. Since it is mechanical, rough handling such as
> frequently pushing in the tray may not be a good idea, but pushing it in
> ever so often is not likely to cause it to become misaligned. So, treat
> it gently and lose no sleep if you forget ever so often.
I believe that the DVD drives I use are designed to notice that the user
is pushing the tray, and at some moment the motor kicks in and finishes
closing the tray. There should be no damage coming from that, unless you
push hard and fast.
Of course, all of them are cheap flimsy plastic things that do not stand
rough handling.
Someone told me that as the modern drives use plastic lenses instead of
glass, the optics have a limited life, even with very careful usage.
They are designed to die soon. There is a name for this… programmed
obsolescence?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
