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Won't play CD. Will play DVD

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don256us

Uber Folding Senior
Joined
Jul 17, 2003
I have a client's laptop. It will not recognize any CD. Music, data, whatever. Windows explorer will not acknowledge that a CD is in the drive. These CDs do work in other drives.

It will play DVDs. It will open DVD movies, DVD music and DVD data.

Is the drive bad or is there something else wrong?

Some specs:
Windows XP Home SP3
Dell Inspiron 6400
Intel T2300
1 GB RAM

WMP 11.0.5721.5260
iTunes 8.2.0.23

Note that NO CD is recognized be it media or plain data. CDs only are affected.
 
Looks like the DVDROM drive is shot. CD and DVD use different laser widths, and it looks like the unit is no longer able to produce the right laser frequency necessary for it to read CDs.
 
I see. I did find a really old CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive out of a trashed laptop. I swapped it in and it reads CDs fine so it can't be related to the machine itself. I think that this must mean you're right.

Thank you for your help.
 
Before you trash it, have you taken a magnifying glass to the lens to check for any pits or marks? Could just be a really dirty lens, or dirty internals that aren't allowing the beam to focus properly.
 
Thanks guys. The customer lives a "clean" life. Either way, I did clean the lens with a commercial lens cleaner and then on my own manually. No love. Great idea though.
 
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