Has cleaning killed my CD drive?

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Level 1

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Has cleaning killed my CD drive?

My child's DVD player was sticking a bit so I bought one of those cleaning discs with the tiny brushes. It did the trick with the DVD player so I thought it was a good idea to give the computer a bit of a spring clean as well. My computer recognised it but didn't seem to go through the steps that well so I abandoned the cleaning and didn't think of it again. A month or so later I went to burn a CD from iTunes and the drive kept telling me to insert a blank CD. I tried a few CDs and thought it must be a faulty batch. As I had never burnt a disc from iTunes i also thought I might just be doing the wrong thing. Another few weeks, and then I had to get on with some serious work and discovered I couldn't burn any documents to CD. Panic bells rang! I can burn DVDs of the WORD documents, but I can't burn CDs. With further investigation I find I can't play music Cds either. Its been so long since that initial clean that I can't remember specifically why it seemed odd at the time, but that appears to be the point when the CD drive stopped working. Any suggestions?

eMac, Mac OS X (10.3.9), 1 GHz PowerPC G4. 1BG SDRAM

Posted on Jan 21, 2007 6:52 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 10, 2007 2:11 AM in response to paulala

No answer to your problem, but it's happened to my eMac too. It was having trouble writing discs, so I ran a cleaner through it.

Now it won't recognise CDs or DVDs at all.

I've bought a LaCie external DVD writer instead.

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Answer 2

paulala Author

Level 1

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Feb 27, 2007 7:01 AM in response to Spoonmedia

No answer to your problem, but it's happened to my
eMac too. It was having trouble writing discs, so I
ran a cleaner through it.

Now it won't recognise CDs or DVDs at all.

I've bought a LaCie external DVD writer instead.

ha...its amazing that sometimes we just need to ask the question to realise we can solve it ourselves. YUP, I've actually got a LaCie CD writer in the cupboard. Now I just have to muck about with seeing if it works. Cheers

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Answer 3

JMVP

Level 6

16,851 points

Feb 28, 2007 5:47 AM in response to paulala

Running a CD lens cleaner as a preventative measure when there are no symptoms of drive problems is generally not advised since there is a non-zero possibility of the lens cleaner disc's brushes causing damage. However, I've used lens cleaners on several computers to revive balky or non-responsive drives; if the drive doesn't improve on first use of the lens cleaner, it's possible that the cleaner managed to scrub some grim off the LED lens but not enough to actually clear the lens entirely, and the interim state can actually makes things worse. If that's the case, try running the CD lens cleaner again for 3 to 5 passes. Lens cleaners typically come in kits with a separate device for cleaning CD discs themselves, with a bottle of solvent for the discs. In severe cases (e.g., kids eating PBJ sandwiches while trying to put a disc in the optical drive), it will help to spary some of the disc cleaning solvent on the CD lens cleaner disc before putting the cleaner disc into the optical drive.

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