[G4] Help: can't read internal CD drive

[Joseph B. Gurman]

     Eytan wrote:

At 5:54 PM -0700 6/15/04, Power Macintosh G4 List wrote:
>I've noticed that my internal CD drive has stopped
>reading/recognizing CD disks when they are put in the
>internal drive. If I put a disk in, nothing shows.
>The drive does open and close as usual when I push the
>manual control on it.
>
>I am running MacOSX 10.2.8.  I am running on a 400mz
>G4 of the Yikes (PCI) model with 728 mg RAM.
>
>When I restart in OS 9.2 (which is also on my hard
>disk) the internal CD works fine, and reads disks
>normally.
>
>So this is not a hardware fault, as far as I know.
>
>I have already run Norton Systemworks 3 and Disk
>Utility, and the problem remains.
>
>My question is: Does anyone have any suggestion as to
>1. Can you think of a way figuring this out and fixing
>it?
>2. If that doesn't work, what else should I do?
>(please don't tell me do a clean reinstall of OX10.2
>except as a last resort).

     WAIT! Don't reinstall anything until you go to a computer supply 
shop, purchase a can of compressed air, open the drive tray, and give 
the innards a few good blasts of compressed air. The symptoms you 
describe, especially on an older machine in which the drive is 
infrequently used, can be reproduced with a diode laser that has 
gotten some dust on it over the years. Even my not-quite-2-year-old 
MDD G4 was making funny noises and not reading some CD's until I 
applied this treatment the other night. Now the CD drive is silent 
and works every time.

     No guarantee that this will solve the problem, but it beats 
reinstalling the OS from scratch.

     Good luck,

						Joe Gurman
-- 
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by."
                                                             - Douglas 
Adams, 1952 - 2001

Joseph B. Gurman, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar Physics
Branch, Greenbelt MD 20771 USA