Miriam Glickman's post (clipped):---

<<<It is pretty dusty ... is it possible that is the problem?>>>




 I am sorry I am not clear in which place it is "dusty". inside the computer as a whole or just the dvd drive? if the latter then I can only visualise your being able to see the dust in the "tray" where you put the dvd disk and the small area inside upto the belt drive which is visible when you open it to insert the dvd disk. assuming you have removed the computer case cover and taken out the dvd rom drive even then you will be able to see the dust only on the dvd casing and i am sure most of it could be only at the ribbon cable /power connector points. hdd/dvd/cd-rom and such drives are extremely well sealed because even a minute particle of dust will render it unusable.

so (1) if the insides of the case is dusty then I would suggest you kindly browse the pc build archives for july and till date in aug since there have been a number of posts on the subject of cleaning. but frankly if it is very dusty inside then I would expect booting problems/fan not working etc.

   (2) if the exteriors/near the power&ribbon connectors of the dvd drive is dusty then  cleaning with a very soft brush should be enough. in this case pl.ensure the connection is not disturbed or become loose

  (3) on a side note(if you choose to do (2) given above and after rebooting) i would suggest you right click "my computer" left click "properties" in the drop down menu and again left click the "device manager" tab and left click on the "+" sign next to "cd-rom" entry and see if your dvd drive is listed

If it is not listed then the  alternative I can think is to try out the drive in another computer to see whether it is in working order.

I am sure there will be other suggestions but HTH.

GOOD LUCK---Venkat Viswanathan

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