CD stops working

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Barker
  • Start date Start date
B

Bill Barker

Please help;

I have a "Barbie PC" (Intel BP810 MB, Celeron CPU) marketed for Mattel by
Patriot Computer in Canada several years ago. The CD stopped reading, so I
replaced it with a different drive. Worked for a while (app. 6 months) but now
won't read again. I bought another of these PC's for replacement parts, but it
too stops reading CD's after a while as well. Tried replacing the battery &
cable in both, but still won't work. PS seem good, too. Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks,
Bill
 
Bill Barker said:
Please help;

I have a "Barbie PC" (Intel BP810 MB, Celeron CPU) marketed for Mattel by
Patriot Computer in Canada several years ago. The CD stopped reading, so I
replaced it with a different drive. Worked for a while (app. 6 months) but now
won't read again. I bought another of these PC's for replacement parts, but it
too stops reading CD's after a while as well. Tried replacing the battery &
cable in both, but still won't work. PS seem good, too. Any ideas, anyone?

Thanks,
Bill
Click to expand...


get a better quality cdrom

the machines you bought for parts more than likely have the same
(evidently low quality) type
 
I have a "Barbie PC" (Intel BP810 MB, Celeron CPU) marketed for Mattel by
Patriot Computer in Canada several years ago. The CD stopped reading, so I
replaced it with a different drive. Worked for a while (app. 6 months) but now
won't read again. I bought another of these PC's for replacement parts, but it
too stops reading CD's after a while as well. Tried replacing the battery &
cable in both, but still won't work. PS seem good, too. Any ideas, anyone?
Click to expand...

You would have been better served by buying a better-quality CDROM instead
of another entire "Barbie PC". The parts in pre-packaged, low-end budget
PCs are likely marginal at best.

Use a Win98 boot floppy and see if your CDROM works from DOS. If so, you
may have a software conflict or other configuration issues in Windows.
That seems to me to be more likely, given that both similar drives failed
in the same fashion. Check Device Manager and see if your drive is
configured properly.

If you determine that it is indeed a hardware issue, you can by a decent
CDROM or DVD drive for less than $40 retail.

If you need additional help on this issue here, more detail would be
helpful. How does the drive fail? How was it installed in the computer
(master/slave/csel, IDE 0/1, etc), which OS you're using, ad inf.
 
Tried replacing the battery &
I think those CD-ROMs are not standard....he mentioned batteries....????
 
Please help;

I have a "Barbie PC" (Intel BP810 MB, Celeron CPU) marketed for Mattel by
Patriot Computer in Canada several years ago. The CD stopped reading, so I
replaced it with a different drive. Worked for a while (app. 6 months) but now
won't read again. I bought another of these PC's for replacement parts, but it
too stops reading CD's after a while as well. Tried replacing the battery &
cable in both, but still won't work. PS seem good, too. Any ideas, anyone?
Click to expand...
Get a decent CDROM drive or better still, a DVDROM drive.

Don't buy a Samsung or Creative Labs one.
 
Conor said:
Get a decent CDROM drive or better still, a DVDROM drive.

Don't buy a Samsung or Creative Labs one.
Click to expand...

Why not?? I have a Samsung SW-232b for over a year now and it has
performed flawlessly. It has never given me a bit of trouble and I've
burned and read a lot of disks. And it is 'very' quiet. I don't know
about the DVD drives but the CD-RW is just fine!
 
I bought another of these PC's for replacement parts, but it
too stops reading CD's after a while as well.
Click to expand...

_________________________________________________________

Before tossing it out, try cleaning the lens. I use compressed air, but
there are special CDs with little brushes on them too. I've never used
the latter, but they probably would do the job.

I live in a dusty area (desert) and have to clean mine about once a
year.
 
Why not?? I have a Samsung SW-232b for over a year now and it has
performed flawlessly. It has never given me a bit of trouble and I've
burned and read a lot of disks. And it is 'very' quiet. I don't know
about the DVD drives but the CD-RW is just fine!
Click to expand...
The low cost CDROM drives were notorious for failing. The Creative one
is a rebadged Samsung.
 
Tried replacing the battery &

I think those CD-ROMs are not standard....he mentioned batteries....????
Click to expand...

I assumed he meant the CMOS battery, which wasn't relevant to his problem
so I ignored it. :-)
 
Back
Top