cd-rom help need PLEASE!

[pcnerdwanbe]

i have a hp pavilion x1983 i have tried 3 different drives and still can't get one to read, the drive will open it is seen in my computer, but when disk is in it i get flashing orange light.
thanks

[tr3wth]

do you mean youv'e tried 3 diffrent cd's or three diffrent disk drives if you mean cd's then your drive is most likely gone bad and you wil need to replace it which is probably the case aonsidering the flashing light and all.

[pcnerdwanbe]

3 diffrent drives i restart computer and get new hardware message the drive can be seen in device manager i can open the drive through my computer, but i will not read the disk all i get is flashing orange light.

[Computer Hope Admin]

Few more questions and suggestions.

1. What version of Windows are you using?
2. Have you tried seeing if the drive can read from Safe mode?
3. Have you tried booting from a CD? Check CMOS setup and make sure the CD-ROM is the first bootable device and use a bootable CD such as the Windows 2000 or Windows XP CD and see if the computer is able to boot from it.
4. Finally, if you've tried all the above suggestions, I'm assuming your connecting a IDE/EIDE CD-ROM drive, if this is the case make sure the drive is jumped to master and try the drive on it's own cable with no other drives connected to it.

Safe mode:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm

Entering CMOS setup:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000192.htm

[pcnerdwanbe]

1. What version of Windows are you using?  XP home
2. Have you tried seeing if the drive can read from Safe mode? no
3. Have you tried booting from a CD? Check CMOS setup and make sure the CD-ROM is the first bootable device and use a bootable CD such as the Windows 2000 or Windows XP CD and see if the computer is able to boot from it. Yes
4. Finally, if you've tried all the above suggestions, I'm assuming your connecting a IDE/EIDE CD-ROM drive, if this is the case make sure the drive is jumped to master and try the drive on it's own cable with no other drives connected to it. tried all of this,
when i first did system restore everything worked fine then uninstalled a screen saver, then cd-rom would not work tried to up date driver did not work, did second system restore, still no read, tried more drives same thing, even switched cables and connectors off of power supply, this is driving me nuts,
Thanks

[Computer Hope Admin]

If you're able to boot from the CD drive of course this means that everything hardware wise works fine, it's something with Windows. Of course this is stating the obvious, however it's a good first step for troubleshooting. I have encountered several issues with MBR and other related viruses causing CD-ROM drives to not work. Of course this was back in the Windows 95/98 days, so couldn't really imagine XP having this issue.

Since this happened after you installed a screen saver possibly other software what I'd first suggest since you're running XP is to do a system recovery back to a earlier version of XP (version before installing your screen saver). Information about doing this can be found at: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000589.htm

If this doesn't work in Windows Device Manager is the CD-ROM drive showing any conflicts (Exclamation marks / Question marks / or any listing of other devices)? If there are conflicts double-click on them and let us know what the error code is.

[pcnerdwanbe]

got it fixed thanks, i put it on the same cable as the hard drive. i tried that once but must not have had it pluged in all the way,
Thanks

[Computer Hope Admin]

got it fixed thanks, i put it on the same cable as the hard drive. i tried that once but must not have had it pluged in all the way,
Thanks

Glad to hear it's fixed and thanks for the follow up.

[patio]

got it fixed thanks, i put it on the same cable as the hard drive. i tried that once but must not have had it pluged in all the way,
Thanks

This will slow down your HDD's transfer rate...