Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
If your CD drive makes a grinding sound, you'll need to replace it. Here's why.
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Oh dear. Horrible grinding sounds are never a good thing.
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From that description alone, I'd be seriously looking at a hardware problem. CD drives make a little noise as the disk spins, of course, but grinding noises shouldn't be part of it.
It could be many things drive related, from a misaligned or wobbly motor to other parts of the drive coming into contact with the CD itself. The worst case is that it's damaging the CDs that you put into the drive.
In short, I'd stop using it, and replace the drive.
It's not a terribly hard operation, so depending on your level of comfort with such things, replacing the CD-ROM drive is something you might do yourself. But that also means it shouldn't be that pricey to have someone else do it either.
Article C2317 - March 28, 2005
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
i put a cd or dvd in my cd rom and it does not show up the light lights up but then it just turns off what can i do?
Posted by: karlie at January 19, 2010 12:11 PMi tried to put in a cd and it said "something, cannot launch because there is smething wrong with your system configuration" after i got it downloaded.
Posted by: nick at March 19, 2010 7:37 PMMy computer also makes a grinding noise when it starts up,when I tried to put a disc in it made a loud grinding noise and pushed the disc back out.My Computer is about 1 years old
Posted by: Allison at April 6, 2010 3:24 PMI was studying a few days ago and I loaded up an ASVAB disc...it worked fine...ejected it...Then today, I tried to load up a data CD and found out that my D Drive isn't working anymore. There was an "!" on the drive in Device Manager, and I can't update the driver or anything. I bought this computer less than 2 years ago. What's going on? Would I need to just replace the drive as stated?
Posted by: James at September 2, 2010 4:01 PMhey, today I was cleaning up my greasy and dirty laptop, and as I was listening to music at the same time, I forgot to NOT clean the Cd rom laser, and accidently did so, and when I went to burn off a disc for my Xbox, the drive just kept on reading, reading etc. I will try a CD lens cleaner, but if anyone has any other reasons or solutions, please help.
Posted by: Joe at June 18, 2011 2:02 PM