AtmaWeapon
07-02-2003, 03:52 PM
Ugh. I've been happily doing work for the Member Pages on my laptop. I back up the entire directory onto a CD and upload it whenever I make significant progress. This procedure has been excellent because it gives me 3 backups: one on my laptop, one on the CD, and one on my desktop.
About 4 months ago, my CD-ROM drive (OK, technically DVD/CD-RW combo) started acting up. I'd put a CD in, it would make a lot of noise, maybe spin the disc up a time or two, and eventually just act like there was no disc inside. It all started when I bought Superunknown by Soundgarden. I put the disc in, it refused to play. At first I blamed copy protection, and it is my duty as a geek to despise copy protection, so the first thing I did was go tell 3 of my friends about how much I was pissed. Then, I noticed that my GTA3 CD wasn't working, either. Soon, no CDs at all would work reliably in my drive. Sometimes the drive would pick the disc up, but any attempts to retrieve data from the drive would end in failure. CDs could not be burned because the drive "forgot" it had a CD in it mid-session. For some strange reason, DVD movies worked perfectly. I have seen 2 drives behave like this before, and both drives were bad. I swapped them into other computers and they still didn't work. I replaced them with new drives, and they worked. So, I decided to peruse my 3-year At-Home Service agreement with Dell and get a replacement.
ROUND 1
I first did research at support.dell.com. It seems that my model of CD-ROM drive was a hot topic of discussion there. On the support forums, I found no less than 10 topics on the first page devoted to issues with the drive. I did find, however, that a firmware upgrade was available that should fix most problems. I upgraded. It didn't work. I called Dell.
The technician I talked to (of course) insisted that it was not my CD-ROM drive that had the problem, but the CDs I was using. She had me try lots of common things, such as removing and reconnecting the drive and rebooting. I was very close to convincing this woman that my CD-ROM drive was broken, but the drive suddenly started working again. I got off the phone with her, and didn't have very much trouble with the drive anymore.
Dell: 1
Atma: 0
ROUND 2
The past few weeks, the drive has returned to its misbehavior. At first, it was maybe one in 20 attempts would fail, so I just chalked it up as annoying malfunctions. Last night, however, it took me 4 attempts to format my beloved CD-RW so I could drag the Member Pages onto it. I reached Kenny at Dell. Kenny was definitely a computer enthusiast, we had a great time discussing his Commodore 64 while my computer was rebooting. We tried random common stuff, as in the first phone call. He had me play with some registry settings, but they didn't fix the problem either. After a while, I was excited because my drive seemed to be working, but it works following this pattern (when I say CD from here on, I mean audio, data, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD. I have tried them all): If the computer is booted with a CD in the drive, that CD works perfectly. If the CD is replaced with another CD, there is a 1 in 15 chance the CD will be recognized. If the new CD is recognized, there is a 50% chance that any data transfer from the CD to the computer will fail somewhere between the start and finish. After an hour with Kenny, we were at a loss. He told me the next step is to reinstall XP to see if there is a malfunction in the OS. I agreed I'd back up as best I could and get back with him when I was ready.
This is where you come in. I need help deciding the victor of round 2 with Dell. I understand somewhat why Kenny feels a reinstall will fix things. He claims that since the drive reads the first CD that is in it, it obviously works fine, so it must be the OS. I beg to differ, as I haven't rebooted enough times to prove this theory, and I have not tried burning a CD yet. I searched the support forums today, and even now, my drive has 2 posts on the first page.
I do not wish to reinstall XP. It will take me quite some time to backup my files, in particular my 1.2GB of mp3s. The backup process is made more difficult by the unreliability of my drive. For all I know, my CD drive will not finish burning a CD, because it has only finished once in my last 4 attempts before calling Dell. My laptop is not connected to the internet from my room, so activating my XP will be rather difficult.
I pray thee, hardware gurus of the forum, tell me. Am I right in assuming that there is a hardware problem with my drive, and XP is not responsible? Is Kenny correct, can reinstalling XP make a drive work again? Or did I win this round, and should my next action be to persistently insist that they send me a new drive?
About 4 months ago, my CD-ROM drive (OK, technically DVD/CD-RW combo) started acting up. I'd put a CD in, it would make a lot of noise, maybe spin the disc up a time or two, and eventually just act like there was no disc inside. It all started when I bought Superunknown by Soundgarden. I put the disc in, it refused to play. At first I blamed copy protection, and it is my duty as a geek to despise copy protection, so the first thing I did was go tell 3 of my friends about how much I was pissed. Then, I noticed that my GTA3 CD wasn't working, either. Soon, no CDs at all would work reliably in my drive. Sometimes the drive would pick the disc up, but any attempts to retrieve data from the drive would end in failure. CDs could not be burned because the drive "forgot" it had a CD in it mid-session. For some strange reason, DVD movies worked perfectly. I have seen 2 drives behave like this before, and both drives were bad. I swapped them into other computers and they still didn't work. I replaced them with new drives, and they worked. So, I decided to peruse my 3-year At-Home Service agreement with Dell and get a replacement.
ROUND 1
I first did research at support.dell.com. It seems that my model of CD-ROM drive was a hot topic of discussion there. On the support forums, I found no less than 10 topics on the first page devoted to issues with the drive. I did find, however, that a firmware upgrade was available that should fix most problems. I upgraded. It didn't work. I called Dell.
The technician I talked to (of course) insisted that it was not my CD-ROM drive that had the problem, but the CDs I was using. She had me try lots of common things, such as removing and reconnecting the drive and rebooting. I was very close to convincing this woman that my CD-ROM drive was broken, but the drive suddenly started working again. I got off the phone with her, and didn't have very much trouble with the drive anymore.
Dell: 1
Atma: 0
ROUND 2
The past few weeks, the drive has returned to its misbehavior. At first, it was maybe one in 20 attempts would fail, so I just chalked it up as annoying malfunctions. Last night, however, it took me 4 attempts to format my beloved CD-RW so I could drag the Member Pages onto it. I reached Kenny at Dell. Kenny was definitely a computer enthusiast, we had a great time discussing his Commodore 64 while my computer was rebooting. We tried random common stuff, as in the first phone call. He had me play with some registry settings, but they didn't fix the problem either. After a while, I was excited because my drive seemed to be working, but it works following this pattern (when I say CD from here on, I mean audio, data, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD. I have tried them all): If the computer is booted with a CD in the drive, that CD works perfectly. If the CD is replaced with another CD, there is a 1 in 15 chance the CD will be recognized. If the new CD is recognized, there is a 50% chance that any data transfer from the CD to the computer will fail somewhere between the start and finish. After an hour with Kenny, we were at a loss. He told me the next step is to reinstall XP to see if there is a malfunction in the OS. I agreed I'd back up as best I could and get back with him when I was ready.
This is where you come in. I need help deciding the victor of round 2 with Dell. I understand somewhat why Kenny feels a reinstall will fix things. He claims that since the drive reads the first CD that is in it, it obviously works fine, so it must be the OS. I beg to differ, as I haven't rebooted enough times to prove this theory, and I have not tried burning a CD yet. I searched the support forums today, and even now, my drive has 2 posts on the first page.
I do not wish to reinstall XP. It will take me quite some time to backup my files, in particular my 1.2GB of mp3s. The backup process is made more difficult by the unreliability of my drive. For all I know, my CD drive will not finish burning a CD, because it has only finished once in my last 4 attempts before calling Dell. My laptop is not connected to the internet from my room, so activating my XP will be rather difficult.
I pray thee, hardware gurus of the forum, tell me. Am I right in assuming that there is a hardware problem with my drive, and XP is not responsible? Is Kenny correct, can reinstalling XP make a drive work again? Or did I win this round, and should my next action be to persistently insist that they send me a new drive?