I recently bought a used T21 ThinkPad laptop form a local shop specialising in second hand PC’s. It’s a 700mhz Pentium 3 with CD-R and DVD-R (not writers) and a single USB 1, so I guess it’s about 4 or 5 years old.
The CD-DVD drive is a ‘cassette’ type which can be replaced by a floppy drive cassette which I got with the machine. It looks like the hard drive has been wiped clean before they installed XP Home as the ThinkPad features are missing.
Problem is that the CD drive will not read any of my back-up or music compilation disks created on blank CD’s (on my main PC). It will however read from ‘original’ data and music CD’s, and some of them are quite old. My blank disks are recent purchases and named makes. I’ve tried duplicating the copies onto other disks but still no good. I’ve also tried the disks on another two laptops without difficulty, one of the laptops is older than this one and it seems to be just this one that’s giving the problem.
I do know that in the ‘early’ days of CD’s that there were problems reading certain media but I thought that these had disappeared now.
I’ve tackled the shop about it and they say it’s my disks and not the drive and they’re refusing to replace the drive.
Any suggestions please?

Try burning your CDs at a lower speed. The slower the burn speed, the less chance of errors and the more chance of them being readable in other drives. Also try burning your CDs onto higher quality, more expensive blank media.

Thanks but CD's already burned and cannot repeat. Also on quality media and only 4 speed writer.

i got this laptop in 2003. and i think something is wrong with my hard drive...or drive a? im not to good w/ computers either. anyway. but when i put in ANY kinds of cds, i hear the computer like "reading" the cd. but then nothing happens. the laptop also doesnt burn cds anymore. it doenst even tell me theirs a blank cd in there either. what is the problem really?

CDR troubles? Check this list:

- Most older drives can see CDR discs, but NOT the CDRW discs - an extra LASER of a different color is needed for CDRW playback.

- Most early DVD drives cannot see either CDR or CDRW disks, because the LASER color is wrong.

- The drive might need cleaning

- Many drives are fussy, and cannot see the dyes on certain brands or lines of CDRs or CDRWs - try using Ez CD Creator to make a backup of the CDR onto a different brand of CDR.

- You might have two devices answering to the same address.

- Is the new drive just a player?

- Bad cable connections?

- Do you have to go into control panel and uninstall the removed floppy before you can use the CD drive?

Hello I have a Samsung VM8000 Series Laptop, I was given it as my friend no longer wanted it. It has a CD drive. With Windows 98 on it. It plays DVD's but it does not play any audio cd's?? I was wondering if I can do anything to let it read audio CD's.

Thanks,
Daniel

Read the rules!

"Do not piggyback threads (aka "hijack" threads) by posting your question as a reply to another question."

Do NOT hijack other peoples threads, especially ones from 2005!

Sorry im new here, I do not know what you mean??

Wheres this thread from 2005 then? is it still on the forum??

This thread was originally started in 2005. You then posted your question about audio cd's in it. That is piggybacking as is considered against the rules. Please create a new thread in teh appropriate forum and re post your problem.