An intermittent problem with my CD/DVD has become chronic. The drive has on occasion been unable to read CDs, particularly games CDs. When I insert a CD into the drive Windows does not recognise the CD and Windows Explorer simply shows the CD drive as empty and not having a disc inserted. However, if I leave the CD in the drive I am able to launch games which need to use the CD, yet Windows will not recognise the CD as being inserted in the drive. Windows Device Manager says the drive is operating correctly and when I insert a CD the drive light blinks indicating that power is going to the drive. Uninstalling then reinstalling the drive does not fix the problem. I have also blasted the CD drive internals with compressed air, in case there was any dust or alike clogging the internals of the drive, but this has not fixed the problem. The computer is running Windows XP SP2.

You have mentioned that while Windows does not recognise any CDs inserted into the drive, even the mere existence of a CD in the drive, should you leave a CD in the drive for a game which requires the CD, then the game loads correctly. My feeling is that you don’t actually need the game CD in the drive to play the game, as it seems that the CD drive is not working correctly at all. If Windows is not recognising that a CD has been inserted into the drive then it is unlikely that the game is able to recognise a CD within the drive. I suggest that you try to play the game without inserting the game CD into the drive and see whether that works correctly.

Should that work, it seems that nothing is being read from the CD/DVD drive at all (even the game CD) so we will need to investigate how the CD drive can be fixed. There are two possible root causes for the issue being experienced. First, there is something wrong with the physical CD/DVD drive. Second, there is something wrong with the installation of the CD/DVD drive on your computer. We will test the first possibility to start, as this will be the simplest to diagnose and fix.

In order to check whether there is something wrong with the physical CD/DVD drive you should try connecting this drive to another computer. This may not be the easiest thing to do, especially if you do not have a spare computer. However, an easy method would be to connect the drive to a friend’s computer by simply disconnecting their CD drive and connecting yours. This should not damage or change anything on their computer, but will just provide a testing bench to see whether there is something wrong with the drive. If the behaviour occurs when the CD/DVD drive is connected to your friend’s computer then it seems there is something wrong with the drive itself. In this situation you may wish to consider purchasing a new CD/DVD drive. These are relatively inexpensive and can be purchased for around $50 from most computer stores.

However, should you connect the drive to a different computer and the drive works correctly, this indicates that there is something wrong with the installation of the drive on your computer. As the first step, reconnect the drive to your computer and check again whether the problem continues (in case the original issue was due to a loose cable or like, which has been resolved by reconnecting the drive to the computer). If the problem persists then we could conduct one more test to eliminate a hardware fault within your computer (e.g. a faulty IDE port on the motherboard or a faulty IDE cable to the CD/DVD drive). Put a bootable CD into the drive (e.g. the Windows XP CD) and restart the computer then try to boot the computer off the CD. Be aware, you may need to press a certain key on the keyboard during boot-up to get the computer to boot from the CD, or you may need to change a BIOS setting to modify the boot device order so the system tries to boot from a CD before the hard drive. If the computer cannot boot from the bootable CD this indicates the drive is not working from outside Windows either, showing the problem is not Windows related but is hardware related. In this case there could be several potential causes of the issue as we previously discussed. As you could waste quite a bit of time and money replacing parts which you suspect are causing the problem, but not actually, I would recommend that you take the computer to a computer technician to have this problem diagnosed and resolved as they should be able to determine the cause and an appropriate resolution quite promptly.

In the event that the computer does boot from the bootable CD this shows that the CD/DVD drive is working outside Windows on your computer. As such, the problem seems to be definitely related to something configuration related on the computer rather than a hardware issue. The first possible cause of the problem could be third-party CD/DVD burning software installed on the computer which is taking control of the drive and preventing Windows from accessing the drive. I have seen this behaviour occur on other computers whereby such CD/DVD burning software attempts to be clever and seize control of the drive to perform their “enhanced” functions but instead simply causes problems. If you have any such third-party CD/DVD burning software installed on the computer then try uninstalling the software to see whether that fixes the problem.

Should the problem continue we still need to ensure that nothing else running on the computer is causing a conflict with the CD/DVD drive. To do this, we will try closing all processes running in the Windows background to see whether this resolves the problem. If the problem stops, we know that one of those background programs or processes is causing the problem. Restart the computer so all the usual processes load on startup. Once Windows has finished booting, press CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Task Manager. In the Task Manager window click the “Processes” tab. You should see a User Name column (if this is not visible, go to the “View” menu > “Select Columns” and tick “User Name” then click OK). We only want to close processes running under your user name, rather than the system user names, so click the “User Name” column heading to sort the processes by user name. Once this has been done select a process running under your user name and click the “End Process” button. Repeat this procedure for all processes running under your user name (except explorer.exe and taskmgr.exe). Do not close any processes running under other user names, as these are system processes required for Windows to operate correctly. Once this has been done, check whether the CD/DVD drive is now working correctly.

If the drive is working correctly, one of those processes was causing the problem. In this case it is now a process of elimination to find the process causing the problem. Restart the computer (so that all the processes restart) and then repeat the above procedure to close the processes, but close the processes one-by-one, each time checking whether the problem has stopped. Once you find the problem has stopped the most recently closed processes is the one causing the problem. In this case you will need to conduct some further investigations to determine the exact nature of that process and whether you can uninstall the program associated with the process or update to a later version which does not have the problem. If you cannot decipher the purpose of the process from the process name you could try using www.processlibrary.com or Google to search for the process to find more information.

Should a background process not be causing the problem we are now at the stage of considering whether a reinstall of Windows will be necessary. Normally beforehand I would suggest that you run the System File Checker utility to scan and correct any corrupt or missing files, but this requires an operational CD/DVD drive (to copy files from the original Windows CD) which is not going to work on your computer! However, we can try a repair installation of Windows XP. This requires you to boot from the Windows XP CD, which you have tested using a bootable CD outside Windows so this process should work. A Windows XP repair installation replaces all Windows system files with new, known good copies. This should not affect any data on your computer at the moment. However, things have been known to go wrong with repair installations so I would strongly recommend that you backup all important data you wish to keep before embarking on this procedure, just in case things go wrong and you lose your data.

Once you have a backup of your data, and wish to proceed with the repair installation, follow the instructions at www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm . This contains an excellent set of instructions for completing the repair installation and I strongly recommend that you read and print these instructions so you can follow them while undertaking the procedure, as completing a repair installation is a bit tricky (as some of the options you need to select during the Windows setup are not that obvious).

Finally, should the repair installation not work then you may need to complete a full reinstallation of Windows. This will be destructive, and all data on your computer will be lost during the reinstallation. Therefore, it is essential that you backup all data on your computer prior to conducting this procedure.