CD ROM IS Possessed!

Hello Everyone!
I'm writing on behalf of my room-mate. She has a HP computer with 128 MB RAM and 20GB HD and CD/RW CD ROM, She runs Windows 98 and lately when she goes in to burn a CD, it's been acting strange. For example. She burned two CD's in a row....no problem and they both burned perfectly. Then later in the day, she tried to burn a third one and the software kept telling her to insert a blank CD. We tried another CD, but it wasn't the CD's. We even inserted Music CD's from the store and the puter wouldn't recognize it. I opened up my computer and clicked on CD drive and it I got the error message that the drive was not ready and to retry or to abort. Then in a couple of days, I was messing with it again, and it burned a CD again. But began acting up also after that. None of her original settings have been changed and her software for burning is not at fault and I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if this is her CD ROM going out or just what it could be? The system is only 2 years old and the burner has not been used much at all. I had someone on another message board tell me to run a laser cleaner in it. Well, that is useless as the CD player won't begin to run when it is acting up like this. The burning software she is using is Acoustica. I have that on my own computer and she also bought it. I've been using it for over two years with great results. If you need more info...just let me know.

Thanks for your help and sorry for the lengthy post!

It does appear that it might have some dirt in it. A laser cleaner will help, when you get it to run...

Since it works intermittently I think it is more mechnical then software related.

If the burner came with the system and it's only two years old, could possible be under warranty..

Too rule out a software problem I would uninstall the burner software, then uninstall both the cdrom and cdrw drivers.

Reboot windows will find the cdrom and cdrw and reinstall. Then reinstall the software.

To uninstall the drivers:

Right Click on "My Computer" then to Properties, Device Manager TAB, highlight the CDROM and hit Remove, same for the CDRW.

For the software: START | SETTINGS | CONTROL PANEL | ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS find it highlight it and hit remove.

This is assumming the software cd is still available.

As for cleaning the CDRW, if a cd disk cleaning is not available, try a cue-tip dipped in alcohol, carefully open the door and see if you can see the little light bulb like thing in there, thats the laser light to clean.

Hey Murf!

Thanks for the advice!! :) I'll give it a go tomorrow! Hopefully it will work. I'll post back and let you know how it went! Thanks!