Repair News Articles from the Tech Industry
July 20, 2006
FEATURE ARTICLE - Troubleshoot Your
CDROM Drive by Otis F. Cooper
CDROM DRIVE TROUBLESHOOTING
There is no simple electronic diagnostics that exist for
the Cdrom drive. You can ensure that all connections
seated correctly and that the jumpers or DIP switches
are in the right position and problems will still occur.
You can check edge connectors and chips on the
expansion cards and check to see if the circuits are
complete, but most disk drives will still find a way to
malfunction or stop working altogether.
Many troubleshooting procedures may have simple
solutions. Make it a practice to start with the easiest
problem solving techniques first. You will be shocked
at the many hours lost in troubleshooting simply
because of one overlooked procedure.
Let's start with the obvious troubleshooting steps
and go on from there. Remember to always and
forever,remove ESD or Electrostatic Discharge
by grounding yourself before touching any of the
components within the computer.
The CDROM does not respond with no power light
First try rebooting the system since it is possible
the controller or power connection may have failed.
If the cdrom drive failed after rebooting,remove
the system unit cover after unplugging the PC and
disconnecting all peripherals. Locate the CDROM
drive disconnect the power connector. Check for
power by connecting the spare connector to the
drive.
If the drive works, the connector is faulty. If the
drive does not work, use a multimeter to check
for power to the drive. If the drive does not work
and there is power from the power supply, the
drive is bad and should be replaced. If the
multimeter reveals no power at the connector,
Use the spare connector and realize that the
power supply is slowly going bad.
The CDROM Fails With The Power Light On
With the power light on, we know the drive is
receiving power. We turn our attention to the
drive's Ribbon Cable. Check the cable to be sure
it is secure to the drive. If so, disconnect the cable
and look at the connector at the rear of the drive
for bent or broken pins. If possible, connect a
known good Ribbon Cable and see if the drive
works.
If the drive fails to work with another cable,
check to see if the drive's jumper is set to
slave instead of master.
The CDROM Drive has stopped working
First check the cdrom for dirt. A dirty CD will cause
the drive to fail. If cleaning the CD does not correct
the problem, try reinstalling the Device Drivers.
Reinstalling the device drivers can sometimes be
done from your setup cdrom or from a diskette.
Check your documentation to find how to install
these drivers.
Take a look at your config.Sys and also your
Autoexec.bat files to be sure the cdrom drive
is being loaded into memory. Look for a line in
the Config.Sys file something like this..
DEVICEHIGH=C:\MTMCDAI.SYS /D:123
And there should be a file similar to this in your
computer's autoexec.bat file...
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:123
If you have worked in the system unit,check for
any loose connections at the drive and controller.
Getting your cdrom running when it fails can most
likely be corrected simply by cleaning the cdrom
and/or checking to see if the device drivers are
loaded into memory. Be sure to check drive cables
and connections when troubleshooting your cdrom
drive. Got cdrom drive problems ( are any pc related
problem for that matter) ? Email us and we hope to
help you that that annoying pc problem fixed. Be
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