Dead Plextor CD-RW ? Help Needed

[MikeOtis]

Hey,

I have a 32\12\10A Plextor CD-RW (which I?ve had for almost exactly a year ) running as the Secondary Master (and only drive on the channel) on a EpoX 8KhA+ under WinXP Pro and it has refused to recognize the last 3 store bought audio CDs I have purchased.

What happens is I put the CD in the drive, and the drive keeps spinning up like a sonfabitch and the LED on the front of the drive keeps blinking but it never actually acknowledges the fact that there is a CD in there.

I have done the following to troubleshoot:

1 ? Tried the CDs under Win 98SE (I have a dual-boot system) and it didn?t work
2 ? Tried the CDs in my 6 year old JVC mini-system (they didn?t play in there either)
3 ? Tried the CDs in my housemate?s 12x HP CD-RW (worked perfectly)
4 ? Tried the CDs in my portable CD\MP3 player (worked perfectly)

If it was three defective CDs in a row (from 2 different stores mind you) wouldn?t my friend?s burner be unable to read it ?

On the other hand, it reads all other store bought (and burned CD-Rs) CDs fine. That said, it sometimes spins up for quite a while before eventually recognizing the CD.

Could the lens be dirty ? If so, could someone walk me through how to
clean it ?

I know this seems like a pretty simple question, but I am confused by all the variables I have switched?they seem to point at everything and nothing being the culprit.

For what it?s worth I did a search on the subject and couldn?t seem to find the answer.

 

[MikeOtis]

ttt

 

[Mavrick007]

You should clean the lens anyway if you've used it alot and it has trouble reading cd's. My dvdrom was acting up and was having a hard time to recognize a dvd or cd I was using so I just got a standard cd cleaner(cd with small brush bristles on the bottom) and ran it through the process. It will probably have some audio telling you that it's cleaning the laser and then to switch tracks and then it will finish. No probs, now the dvdrom works. Hope this helps.

 

[MikeOtis]

Sweet, I?ll give that a go tonight. Hopefully it?ll help.

I assume you?re talking about one of those cd cleaners that you can pick up at Radio Shack or most CD stores ?

Thanks a lot 007, appreciate the advice.

P.S. Yeah it is my only CD drive and I use it a lot for general purpose stuff as well as DAE, so it has seen a lot of use.

 

[MikeOtis]

In case anyone is curious?

I updated the firmware from version 1.07 to version 1.09 and it solved the problem.

I would have updated the firmware sooner, but when I was scanning the firmware description I couldn?t find anything in them that seemed to apply to my specific problem.

 

[Laguna]

Call Plextor and tell them your situation. After you explain, memorize and say this line to every single question/comment they make:

"It still doesn't work."

Got me a new drive from that.

Their tech support will go through anything not to send you a drive, all the way to blaming the CDR, even though it might be name brand. In the end, if it really doesn't work, just keep repeating that line.