CD rom driver tray wont open

[moseynick21]

i have Compaq Presaio 5000, XP Pro, with two CD drivers 'R' and 'RW' only.
CD RW drive tray wont open. i have a CD stuck in side. the light in front of tower at rw drive doesnot work, when eject button is pressed. and icon of rw drive is missing in my computer. i checked and wiggled the connections at the back of the cd rw drive inside computer. help is appreciated.

m nicodemus
[e-mail]

[DMR]

Hi moseynick21,

Welcome to our site. :)

Because your question concerns a valid problem with a piece of hardware, I'm moving your post to one of the forums in our technical section. You'll get more knwledgeable "eyeballs" on your problem that way.

Buckle up, we're going for a ride...

[g0rb4ch3v]

Do you have an "emergency" open slot? If yes, there is a hole for a pen to stick in under the tray and drag it out.

[DMR]

The drive might simply have failed, but:

1. Does the BIOS "see" the physical drive, and does it show up in Device Manager?

2. As Kramerica suggested:
If you want to get the stuck disk out of the drive, look for a small, round hole on face of the drive. It's usually somewhere below the CD tray, and inside that hole is the mechanical release mechanism. Carefully insert something like a straightened-out paperclip into the hole until you feel the end of the paperclip contact the face of the release lever. Press slowly but firmly to engage the lever; the drive tray's door should pop open enough for you to grab it. Gently pull the tray fully open, remove the disk, and slide the tray closed again.

3. If the drive's eject button and front-panel indicator light aren't even working, the drive may not be getting power. Hopefully, your power supply has a few spare power connectors on it; plug one of those into the problematic drive and see if that gives it any life.

4. If you can determine that the drive is at least getting power, try a new IDE cable.

5. If there is another drive on the IDE cable, remove it and try it with only the RW drive connected.

[Catweazle]

First up. Emergency action.

There should be a tiny round hole at front of the unit. With the PC turned off, unfold a metal paperclip, poke it in the hole and manually eject the CD that's in the drive.

Second up: Solving the problem

This behaviour is most often a software fault, and occurs when CD burning software confuses Windows. Uninstall all CD burning software. Then from Device manager uninstall the CD-RW drive. Reboot. The drive will be detected again and reinstalled. Then reinstall ONLY the CD burning package that you commonly use, rather than multiple programs. If that CD burning package is Adaptec throw it away and go get Nero instead.

[DMR]

First up. Emergency action.

There should be a tiny round hole at front of the unit. With the PC turned off, unfold a metal paperclip, poke it in the hole and manually eject the CD that's in the drive.

Erm... didn't Kramerica and I post that info a few hours ago? :mrgreen:

Second up: Solving the problem

This behaviour is most often a software fault, and occurs when CD burning software confuses Windows. Uninstall all CD burning software....

True. If the drive is getting power, the BIOS correctly detects it, and Device Manager either doen't show the drive or reports that there are problems with the drive, here is a description and a solution for the most common software-related cause of that (from a previous post of mine concerning a similar problem:

An explanation and fix for the most common cause of what you describe can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q270008/

Although the article pertains to Win 2000, I've seen the problem occur with XP as well; the fix described for Win 2000 works for XP.

Please note that although the article only refers to the "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" entries in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet registry subkey, I've had to apply the fix to the similar entries (if found) in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet00x subkeys as well in order to make it work.
__________________

[Catweazle]

I'd strongly suggest that the uninstall/reinstall be the first response, and the upperfilter/lowerfilter registry edit be done only if the problems recur. There are quite a few similar circumstances which lead to optical drive problems such as this. Uninstall/reinstall of the drive quite often fixes the problem without further intervention necessary.

Regardless of the specifics of the drive problem, having multiple Burning and emulation programs installed is a recipe for disaster. Here's my own recipe for success (on Windows XP machines)

* Do not use CD-RW discs. CD-R discs are inexpensive items, and it simply doesn't matter that you aren't filling it before burning it!

* Use the CD burning wizard of Windows XP for copying files to CD wherever possible.

* Have Nero installed. For preference, use the full retail version. Use Nero for specialised CD burning tasks and for large backup jobs.

* Have CloneCD installed if you wish to create safety backups of program CDs. Do not install any drive emulation components which may accompany it.

Do not use any other burning software.

[DMR]

Regardless of the specifics of the drive problem, having multiple Burning and emulation programs installed is a recipe for disaster.

Agreed; you're almost begging for software conflicts by installing multiple multimedia applications which want control over the same physical drive.

[Catweazle]

I probably should extend that to include mutiple media players, multiple DVD palying applications etc etc..........

Decide on the program you actually WANT to use and stick with it. Less problems that way ;)

[DMR]

I probably should extend that to include...

No kidding- Amen to that.

[j198116]

if all fails, use a needle to force eject the CD, usually above the Eject button there is a tiny hole in which you can insert the needle (preferabley a money clip) to force open the CD drive, Sometimes after you force eject and reinstall CD drivers it works

Bu just wish you all the luck