[peyote]

My disc drive just packed up. When ever I put a CD in the drive my computer nothing happens as if the CD is not being read. When I click "my computer" and click on the CD in "my computer" windows explorer crashes and I get the dreaded "blue screen of death". I can here movement in the disc drive and but it is not reconising what is on the CD for some reason.

Can I fix this with out buying a new one ?

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If it doesn't read anything at all the lasers are probably dead.
You can verify this by putting a bootable CD in the computer (any Windows CD will do), telling the computer to boot off CD and if the laser is good, the machine will boot off the disk. If the laser's toast, the machine will just boot off the hard drive again.

The lasers aren't user serviceable so a new drive is the cheapest solution if the lasers are dead.

[Neil Jones]

If it doesn't read anything at all the lasers are probably dead.
You can verify this by putting a bootable CD in the computer (any Windows CD will do), telling the computer to boot off CD and if the laser is good, the machine will boot off the disk. If the laser's toast, the machine will just boot off the hard drive again.

The lasers aren't user serviceable so a new drive is the cheapest solution if the lasers are dead.