CD drive not spinning

[MadEye2]

My friend is having a problem with her CDROM drive. The drive bay opens and shuts but when she puts a CD in she says it isn't spinning and she can't access anything from windows. The drive is listed in "My Computer" but nothing comes up when double clicked on. As far as I can tell she hasn't disabled the CD drive. Do you reckon the motor on it is broke? What else could it be?

 

[Fern]

Check the cables (IDE and Power) first to make sure they haven't come loose. Also, put a fan on the power connector attached to the drive and see if the fan spins (to make sure the connector is not dead). I had a 4 pin connector go bad (no power) and the symtoms sounds similar.

Fern

 

[MadEye2]

There must be some power going through because the drive opens and closes, and it should spin even without the IDE connecter shouldn't it - behaving like a regular music CD player? I'll ask her to try it but she doesn't want to tinker inside the thing. She bought a fairly old Pentium III 600, I don't know if the drive is new, but it sounds like it might be old and burnt out

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: MadEye2
There must be some power going through because the drive opens and closes, and it should spin even without the IDE connecter shouldn't it - behaving like a regular music CD player? I'll ask her to try it but she doesn't want to tinker inside the thing. She bought a fairly old Pentium III 600, I don't know if the drive is new, but it sounds like it might be old and burnt out

On mine it wasn't a bad IDE connector. Rather the 4 pin molex connector from the PSU wasn't carring any(or maybe enough) voltage. I assume there is some current from the IDE channel cable cuz the the optical drive light would come on and the drawer would open & close. It caused a big trouble-shooting headache cuz I knew the drives were working as I had put them in another rig to test. Eventually I began to suspect the 4 pin connector from the PSU and put a case fan on there and it wouldn't spin when I booted up. So no power from the PSU to the drive.

Anyway, it's a long shot. If that connector from the PSU to the drive does have power, and the IDE cable is inserted correctly, then yeah, maybe a bad drive- perhaps the motor in the drive. Or, if they're "belt driven" that c/h come loose. But you'd have to open it up to see something like that.

 

[MadEye2]

Thanks, theres not a lot that can we can do anyway. She's being stubborn and won't open her PC to check lol and she lives a few hundred miles away so I can't have a look. I didn't know drives draws some power from IDE for the open/close mechanism, and the drive functioned properly the other week, so it's most probably the belt, assuming it's an old drive. Thanks.