Stuck on you 'till the end of time: getting glue residue out of my optical drive.
December 27, 2006 4:52 AM 
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My DVDs are stuck, part two: I figured out what's wrong with my optical drives, and now I'm wondering if there's an easier way to fix them.
Turns out one of my DVDs had a ring of adhesive surrounding the center hole. The glue melted while the DVD was in the player, transferring itself to whatever it is that grabs the DVD from below and spins it. As a result, whenever I stick a CD or DVD in that drive and let it spin for a while, the glue remelts and sticks to the disc. Suddenly ejecting the disc becomes more of a pain than it should be. This completely explains nearly all the symptoms I experienced with my two drives (the only thing I can't figure out is how the second drive fixed itself, though I have theories).
Having figured out the problem a couple of months ago, I had hoped that if I just cleaned every disc after it came out of the drive (some of the glue sticks to the disc), eventually there wouldn't be enough glue left inside the drive to cause any more problems. But I'm not so sure this is going to solve the problem any more.
Are there cleaning products specifically designed for this sort of problem, perhaps ones that don't involve me tearing my DVD burner apart? If disassembly is unavoidable, is there a way to take apart my DVD drive without, say, burning my eyes out with lasers or scratching the lens (and then what would I use as a cleaning agent)? Or should I just resign myself to having a sticky DVD burner and plunk down $30 sometime down the road for a second one to use as my main drive?
posted by chrominance to computers & internet (2 comments total)
posted by chrismear at 5:54 AM on December 27, 2006