BleepingComputer.com: Older Cd-rom Will Not Start

My 1998 CD-Rom won't work in my new computer. I put it in and all it does is make some noises as if it is pretending to attempt to work, but nothing happens. I looked in "My Computer" under the disk drive and it isn't even in there.. I know I put in the disk right, but why won't this work? Thanks for any help.

perplexed22, on Mar 13 2006, 01:45 PM, said:

Is it the disc that's not there, or the actual drive itself that's not there?

Not to point out the obvious, but have you tried cleaning the CD? Dust, dirt, scratches and "gunk" in general will prevent a drive from reading a CD. If it is severely scratched, then try cleaning it with one of those "CD repair kits" that's supposed to repair a scratched CD.

One thing popped out to me about that, "1998".

Could also just be that the old cd-rom is old and wont work anymore. That was the case with my eight year old DVD rom that came with the old computer we had. I tried putting it in our newer computer and it wouldn't work. However, something would show up in 'my computer' just it wouldn't actually start loading the cd/dvd at all. If the problem isn't just that your cd isn't clean or scratched, I'd imagine you'd have to get a new cd-rom. Which isn't that big of a deal considering that they're not that expensive, can range from like $15-30.

CD-Roms are cheap now have you thought about upgrading? You can get yourself a nice DVD-Writer for 50$ brand new and if you like ebay... well you know what I mean...