My mates DVD Rom has developed the following problem:

When any cd or DVD is inserted into the drive, the computer fails to read the disc. Autoplay etc does not work. When he goes to My Comp and navigates to the DVD Rom and double clicks on the disc, the computer tries to access the disc and then shuts the machine down to a blank screen. The only way to retrieve the disc and get the computer working is then to turn it off and back on.

He has been using both burnt and original cds and dvds with no problems in the past.

Would it be drivers for Rom, or a more serious mechanical problem with the Rom itself?

Any help appreciated.

when you say it shuts it down to a blank screen, do you mean it actually shuts down windows, but leaves the power on & screen black? Or it just locks up with a black screen? I ask because you said you need to turn it off & back on again, yet "shutting down" a modern PC usually turns off the power & makes the screen black anyway :)

Sounds like maybe the ide port is toast? try another dvd drive in it to confirm. I've had rooted drives before that made windows lock up a little trying to access discs but never "shut down" my pc.

An easy way to troubleshoot would be to place another DVD drive into your mate's machine and see if that one works.

If it has the same problem, then it's an OS/hardware problem. Otherwise the original drive is indeed rooted.

faulty dvd rom/ faulty cable/ faulty psu

I have been told it locks windows so that desktop is frozen.



Thanks for the help guys. :)

I had that problem on one of my machines, tried another DVD rom and it worked fine after that.

Yeh hopefully its the dvd rom, so he can replace easily.

I'm betting that's what the problem is.