burned out dvd drive

LOLL

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Jul 13, 2009, 8:56:01 PM7/13/09

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Recently the dvd drive in my HP media center PC started to get noisy when
booting windows, instead of the usual spinning sound it began making a noisy
humming sound. Now apparently it is burned out and wont do anything even the
disc door wont open. To complicate the matter windows also has stopped
working (wont start).
My question is could a burned out dvd player prevent windows from starting
also?

Curious

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Jul 13, 2009, 10:09:08 PM7/13/09

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Have you gone into the BIOS when you boot and made sure that the DVD drive
is not selected as the first boot drive?

"LOLL" <LO...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4023AA57-D010-4B7A...@microsoft.com...

Gene E. Bloch

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Jul 14, 2009, 2:01:19 PM7/14/09

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I second Curious's suggestion. It might be that the BIOS keeps trying to
decide whether there's a boot CD present and hangs because of the read
error.

--
Gene E. Bloch letters0x40blochg0x2Ecom

Gilgamesh

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Jul 15, 2009, 5:59:07 AM7/15/09

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"Curious" <spam...@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:uo3kWgCB...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...

> Have you gone into the BIOS when you boot and made sure that the DVD drive
> is not selected as the first boot drive?

Or you could just pull the power plug out of the DVD drive and see if
windows boots.

Gene E. Bloch

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Jul 15, 2009, 5:02:59 PM7/15/09

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On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:29:07 +0930, Gilgamesh wrote:

> "Curious" <spam...@nomail.com> wrote in message
> news:uo3kWgCB...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>> Have you gone into the BIOS when you boot and made sure that the DVD drive
>> is not selected as the first boot drive?
>
> Or you could just pull the power plug out of the DVD drive and see if
> windows boots.

It's a *lot* easier to go into the BIOS - there's no need to disassemble
the computer...

>> "LOLL" <LO...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:4023AA57-D010-4B7A...@microsoft.com...
>>> Recently the dvd drive in my HP media center PC started to get noisy when
>>> booting windows, instead of the usual spinning sound it began making a
>>> noisy
>>> humming sound. Now apparently it is burned out and wont do anything even
>>> the
>>> disc door wont open. To complicate the matter windows also has stopped
>>> working (wont start).
>>> My question is could a burned out dvd player prevent windows from
>>> starting
>>> also?
>>>

Mike Davies

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Jul 16, 2009, 7:29:24 PM7/16/09

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Gene E. Bloch wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:29:07 +0930, Gilgamesh wrote:
>
>> "Curious" <spam...@nomail.com> wrote in message
>> news:uo3kWgCB...@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>>> Have you gone into the BIOS when you boot and made sure that the DVD drive
>>> is not selected as the first boot drive?
>> Or you could just pull the power plug out of the DVD drive and see if
>> windows boots.
>
> It's a *lot* easier to go into the BIOS - there's no need to disassemble
> the computer...

But if it's a hardware problem then that might not work so I'd do as suggested
and try unplugging both the data an power cables from the DVD drive.

--
Mike

Gene E. Bloch

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Jul 17, 2009, 3:07:15 PM7/17/09

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Good point. I would follow your advice if mine doesn't work :-)

Obviously, I hadn't thought about the scenario that you imply, that the bad
DVD drive is preventing the whole drive interface hardware from working
properly, rather than simply making the BIOS get stuck in a loop (sort of).

And I agree - both power and interface cables, not just power. In fact, I'd
say that the interface cable is (probably) the more important one.