fun comp story

[randomized]

Okay i'll start from the top. My computer is quite old, with the cdrw drive being the oldest piece of it all. (going on ~10 years now) For the longest time it has been frustrating to open... i click the eject button and the light lights up and i hear it try to open but it doesnt. i have to repeatedly spam the eject button and after anywhere between 30-90secs it'll open, but since im spamming the button it will close real fast so i have to stick my finger in there to stop it...sometimes that takes me a good 2-3 times to do it lol. now if there is a cd already in the drive, then it opens no problem, so basically since i'm a cheap bastard and dont want to buy a new cd drive i just always keep a cd in there so i have no issues.

Fast forward to a few years back when the first ff expansion came out that was dvd-rom..well my comp only having a cdrw drive, i thought it would be a perfect time to add a dvd drive as well! And me being the cheap bastard that i am, i only bought a dvd-rom drive so i had to keep my cdrw drive in there as well incase i wanted to burn something. Anyways, the dvd drive worked fine, opened no problem whether a disk was inside or not.

Fast forward some more.. i upgrade my video card to one that requires a direct connect to my power supply. I had no extra plugs so i just unplugged the dvd drive and used that, no biggie since i rarely used the dvd drive for anything but cd's anyways!

Anddddd fast forward to now, i was watching a dvd on my ps3 and i was about 3/4 the way through it, when suddenly i get the dreaded unable to read disk -_- I thought to myself screw it, i'll just unplug my cdrw drive and plug in the dvd drive and see if that allows me to finish the movie in peace... i kindof wanted a reason to do so anyways because lately the cd drive was acting up in other ways. as i'm plugging it in i remembered that i downgraded my video card and i had an extra plug this whole time anyways so i felt pretty dumb considering i could have had both drives plugged in but oh well i was fully on my way to the exciting conclusion to my movie so who cares.

I turn my comp back on, get to desktop and hit my awesome dvd drive and bam, that one is stuck too. i spam the dvd eject button, and nothing. i spam the cd drive, and nothing. Logically speaking it must be some other hardware issue because what are the odds of two separate drives having the same exact issue. As far as the rest of the comp goes, i have multiple upgrades to everything else in my comp except for harddrive but i wouldnt think that would have anything to do with opening the drives lol.


TLDR my cdrw and my dvd drive both share the similar problem. Neither will open the first time i press the eject button unless a disk is already inside, i have to spam the eject button for a good 30-90secs before i get to test my reflexes and see if i can stop it from closing in time. Any idea on what would cause this?

P.S i love comps, #1 source for the randomest solutions and problems.

[Olo401]

Dust in the gears, dust on the belt making it lose grip on the gears.. it's really amazing and annoying how dust buildup can wreck your equipment heh.

Have you tried the paper clip thing to get the drives open yet?

[Seanr]

have you tried the paper clip thing to get the drives open yet?

this.

[randomized]

ok i located a paper clip and it worked but i still find it interesting that the exact same problem started happening on both drives... unless thats a common issue? maybe someone that knows more about it can explain to me why i can open it fine if there is a cd already in the drive, but it wont open if its empty