Lost cause laptop - Problem #1

May 16, 2008 10:25 PM

I have an old hp pavilion zt1170. It's been through quite a lot, such as being frozen, blasted with dust, rained and spilled on, dropped and, well, subjected to a variety of other abuse of which this list only scratches the surface. Understandably it isn't in perfect working order.

I dug it up recently and out of a sense of nostalgia and academic interest I would like to see how much work it would be to get it back to a state of relatively normal functioning. The first issue I would like to tackle is the DVD/CD-RW drive as it is preventing me from reinstalling my os's. You see, it's a bit fickle. At times it spins up and reads discs fine, and at other times--most times--it starts getting ready to spin up then poops out. I hear an occasional whir and see a blink here and there from the activity light, but it is essentially unresponsive. If I pop it out and then back in a hundred or so times it might (or might not) spin up. Are there any possible home remedies to this situation or will I be stuck buying a new drive if I want to fix this?

posted by mockdeep to computers & internet (3 comments total)

First thing I would try would be to clean the laser.
posted by wongcorgi at 11:12 PM on May 16

You could try blowing the dust out of the drive in hopes that would help. Depending on what you're wanting to do with this thing you can get a CD drive pretty cheap, but I have found that the best outlet for the kinds or parts you need are much handier that any computer store, though their hours leave something to be desired.

A morning bicycle ride on trash day will usually net you the drive you need, possibly an entire working computer or two.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 12:32 AM on May 17

You can look into network booting (an OS installer or just running diskless).
posted by deeaytch at 5:58 AM on May 17