CD-ROM Not Working

CD-ROM not working

If the CD-ROM drive stops working, the cause is probably dust, bad disks, a loose cable, or CD-ROM driver software.

First, get rid of dust. Dust off the CD-ROM disks and tray. Take a deep breathe and blow air into the CD-ROM drive, but avoid spit. If you wish, buy a CD-ROM head cleaner at Radio Shack; it’s a fake CD-ROM disk that has brushes on it, to brush dust off the CD-ROM lens.
If a CD-ROM disk has scratches on it, that disk might be damaged and never work. Try other disks instead.

If you’re using a “homemade” CD-R or CD-RW disk created on another computer, the signals on that disk might be too weak to be detected by an old CD-ROM drive. Try disks created in other ways instead, or try using a different CD-ROM drive.

Open the computer and check the cable that runs out of the CD-ROM drive. Probably one end of that cable is loose and flimsy.

Try to plug it in more snugly.

If you’re using modern Windows and your screen’s four corners say “Safe mode”, you can’t use the CD-ROM drive while your computer is in that mode: you must shut down the computer and restart in “Normal mode”.

You must teach the computer what kind of CD-ROM drive you have.

If your computer came with modern Windows, it should have come with a floppy disk called an “Emergency Recovery Start-Up Multimedia CD-ROM Boot Disk” (or some abridgment of that name). Put that disk into the computer, then reboot the computer.

That disk usually makes the CD-ROM drive work, at least temporarily. While the CD-ROM drive is working, reinstall Windows.

If you’re not using modern Windows, you must put lines in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files about the CD-ROM drive.

The line in AUTOEXEC.BAT should typically be “Lh mscdex /d:mscd000 /m:12 /e”, but the line in CONFIG.SYS depends on which CD-ROM drive you bought and how you installed other devices that might conflict with it.

Comments about AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files are in the section on MS DOS; but before you try to edit those files, check whether your hard disk or floppy disk still has old but workable versions of those files.

For example, the old version of CONFIG.SYS might be called CONFIG.OLD or CONFIG.000 or something similar. To find out whether you have such a file, say:

C:\>dir config.*

That makes the computer print a list of all CONFIGs in your hard disk’s root directory. In that list, notice the date of each file; try reusing a CONFIG that has a date slightly before when your CD-ROM drive stopped working.

Try using that old CONFIG.SYS and old AUTOEXEC.BAT by renaming them to CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, after making backup copies of your current (non-working) CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.