CD RW Drive failure

February 23, 2005 6:42 AM

I know they are throw away items these days, but I have a pretty new CDRW drive that just ejects the CD as soon as it closes....is there a way to repair this or should I just order a new one?
posted by keep it tight to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Could be a dust bunny playing havoc with some sensor. Blast away with some canned air inside the tray and see if that helps. Sometimes a larger piece of debris gets into cd drives (usually a piece of an exploded disk). A vigorous shaking with the tray slot point down will often shake it loose.
posted by Mitheral at 6:50 AM on February 23, 2005

Does it only eject when there's a CD in the drive or when the tray's empty as well?

My second port of call with any hardware fault is to try put on new firmware. (First is to blow/shake/hit/kick as appropriate)
posted by quiet at 7:14 AM on February 23, 2005

...and the final choice is to open up the drive's case and make sure everything is moving right, there are no extra bits, and that the laser lens is clean and clear.

Then you throw it out.
posted by smackfu at 7:16 AM on February 23, 2005

Quick thought: have you tried different CDs? On the off chance you're trying with an audio CD, and it's got some sort of Digital Rights Management nonsense on it that stops it playing in a PC that might cause the drive to spit the disc out directly.
posted by nthdegx at 8:23 AM on February 23, 2005