Saving my PC's Optical Drive

February 22, 2009 5:50 AM

Is there a way to selectively disable the CD/DVD drive in my computer?

We let the kids play the computer occasionally, and from time to time, my (pre-school aged) son will press the button, open the drive and start playing with it. What I'd like to do is find a way to 'turn off' the drive, or at least disable the eject button, while the kids are playing the computer. Is there a way to do that? On Windows XP, Dell Inspiron 1505.

posted by brandman to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Found this:

CDLocker

on various freeware sites. I can't vouch for the integrity of the program, I'd scan the hell out of it, keep an eye on HijackThis, etc.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:59 AM on February 22

This one, too: CD Eject Tool. Seems (slightly) less shady.

One wonders if these aren't just frobbing something in Windows that could be done manually with regedit or the administrative tools.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:01 AM on February 22

In Control Panel, open System Properties. Click the Hardware tab on top. Click Device Manager. Find the DVD drive in the list and double-click. At the bottom of the properties box select "Disable this device". The drive bay will still open, but it will not play any discs.
posted by TDIpod at 7:35 AM on February 22

I think the problem is that the kids are opening the drive, not that they are playing stuff in it.

I suggest you not let your kids play with the computer, at all. If they don't break the CD tray off, they'll pour juicy juices in the keyboard, knock it off the desk, break it fighting over who gets to play Runescape or Furcadia- I've seen it all. You need to keep your computer out of the reach of their sticky little hands or they will find a way to break it.
As a toddler, I managed to take the meter casings off my dad's vintage 500W vintage HF amplifier and twist the needles off, rendering the amp useless.
posted by dunkadunc at 8:23 AM on February 22

Toddler Keys.

Although dunkadunc has a point. I wouldn't leave a toddler unsupervised around a computer; that's an accident waiting to happen.
posted by LuckySeven~ at 9:45 AM on February 22

I tried CD Eject Tool on XP and it does work to disable the eject button, but only while it's running, which shows as an icon in the system tray, which can allow re-enabling it.

It doesn't seem to be a registry key. Monitoring the registry during locking of the eject button didn't show anything that I could see except for it saving it's values to it's own software entry.

It's probably using one of the Windows functions to capture the event and tell Windows 'no', or changing a security policy value.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 10:30 AM on February 22

Drive Manager is another alternative that's freeware. No install (at least with the zipped version), it's a standalone exe. Virus scan found nothing. The drive remains locked after closing the program (and yes the process isn't just running in the background), so you could just hide it in a folder somewhere, run it lock the drive, close the app, then re-enable it when you need to.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 11:00 AM on February 22

I think the problem is that the kids are opening the drive, not that they are playing stuff in it.

I suggest you not let your kids play with the computer, at all. If they don't break the CD tray off, they'll pour juicy juices in the keyboard, knock it off the desk, break it fighting over who gets to play Runescape or Furcadia- I've seen it all. You need to keep your computer out of the reach of their sticky little hands or they will find a way to break it.
As a toddler, I managed to take the meter casings off my dad's vintage 500W vintage HF amplifier and twist the needles off, rendering the amp useless.

I sort of agree- it's probably better to teach the kids not to do certain things, rather than put up barriers to things. There will come a time when you can't get a barrier up and the kid will have no sense of "this seems like a bad idea".
posted by gjc at 11:58 AM on February 22