A friend of mine has a computer where the CD Drive will read music CD's fine, but it will not allow her to read any CD's with computer programs. She says sometimes an installation screen will pop up, but that is it. She has tried several computer disks (all manufactured, licensed software) but none will work in it.

My main Question - If the CD Drive is "going" bad, will it read music but not other types of disks?

Will a new drive fix this problem? All the CD Drives I replaced made some horrible grinding noise to let me know they were bad.

She has already tried disc cleaners and CD-Drive Cleaners

Thanks for your help.

dalcb22: It would be helpful to know more about your friends system, i.e, make and model of computer and the operating system. Please post back with that info, more detail is better than less.

If the OS is W98 (and perhaps others, but I'm only familiar with 98) here's something to try before you post back:

Open the CD tray and drop-in one of the data-type discs that you mentioned and hold down the "shift" key while closing the tray. Pressing the "shift" key will temporarily disable the AutoRun feature so nothing will happen until you tell it to.

Then go to Start>Programs>Windows Explorer ( not Internet Exporer). When you click on WE, you'll get a slender top-to-bottom window on the left side showing your folders and devices. Find and click on the one that represents the CD unit (mine is designated "E" and shows a little icon that looks like a CD unit, yours may be different). After you click, you should hear the CD unit begin to spin and shortly thereafter the larger screen to the right of the one you clicked in should display the contents of the disc you inserted. When you post back, tell us about the disc you inserted and if what you saw on the screen seems to correlate with the disc. FYI, this is a good way to safely discover the contents of any unmarked disc, or to pick-off and install just a portion of a disc. .

The Computer is a Dell w/ Windows XP Home.

Although the computer is not here, she said the files and folders appear to be there, when she navigates through explorer.

I'm just trying to figure out if it is a HW or SW problem.