IT Queries: Computer problems answered

Why did a disc shatter in in my DVD Burner? I have just got a new computer (2 months old)with Vista Operating system.

The disk probably shattered because it was damaged. A modern CD or DVD disk drive spins disks at up to 10,000 revolutions per minute.

At those speeds, the slightest damage or flaw in the disk can cause it to shatter. A few years ago, disk manufacturers stopped selling 52X CD burners because the speeds were simply too dangerous for this reason.

If you notice damage on a optical disk (DVD, CD or BluRay) don’t use it or, if it contains important data ask your computer tech to burn a new copy for you at the lowest possible speed.

You may also want to get your computer tech to check the CD drive wasn’t damaged by the exploding disk and remove any left over plastic.

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.

I do a lot of travelling and I would like to take my own movies with me.  So I recently bought an ASUS EeePC (XP version) and a very thin and compact external 160gb WD hard disk.  As you would know the Asus has no DVD facility so I want to burn DVDs to an external drive so I can view them on my EeePC.

I’ve tried a couple of freeware things like Handbrake and DVD Shrink (which has a fraudulent scamming website purporting to be its real website!).   Is there a way I can do this safely, please?  Barry.

Warning: Duplicating copyrighted material without the owner’s permission is illegal in most countries. Make sure you have the right to copy before doing so. This answer assumes you have that permission or legal right to do so.

Copying DVDs to disk is useful function. I use DVD Shrink myself to copy DVDs that events organisers have sent me of my speeches and presentations. It’s very handy to save them to a hard drive and helps with making showreels and compliations.

The official website for DVD shrink is at dvdshrink.org. This site doesn’t have any malware and it sounds to me like you’ve been directed to a malicious site by a search engine.

The Pain in the Tech website has an excellent tutorial on using DVD Shrink and that’s what I would recommend you follow to get the files across. Once they are on your external drive, try them on the EeePC.

Let us know how you go with this as it’s an interesting use of an EeePC we haven’t tried.