IT Queries: Computer problems answered

My sister has a 5 year old laptop with windows xp home operating system. The system says the cd drive is present and correct, however the drive accepts a disc but does not work. There have been no hardware or software additions or subtractions to the laptop. What do you think?

It sounds like the drive doesn’t like some CDs. Try the drive with a number of disks to see if the system can see any of them. You might want to test a recently purchased music CD in good condition.

CD and DVD drives are known as optical drives because they shine a light on the drive and read the reflection sometimes the light or the receiving lens gets clogged with dirt and dust. You can buy a drive cleaning kit for under $20.

If a clean up doesn’t work, then the drive is probably failing and should be replaced. The problem with laptops is it’s often difficult and expensive to get parts for them. Given this computer is five years old, it’s not worth spending too much money on it.

You can get an external CD/DVD drive for under $150 and this is the best bet if you don’t want to replace the entire system.

 So, test the drive with different CDs, clean it and consider replacing it.

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