Compaq Presario 900 Laptop
 

Running Windows XP. CD drive has stopped working. It seems to be
spinning but does not read anything. What can I check? Thanks.

Compaq Presario 900 Laptop
 

Hi!

Running Windows XP. CD drive has stopped working. It seems to be
spinning but does not read anything. What can I check? Thanks.

Open the drive and check the lens (but *don't* touch it). See if maybe
there is some dust on the lens.

I'm beginning to think that the drives in these machines have a habit
of dying in that way. I have one that does the exact same thing (disc
spins up, but the machine won't boot from it, nor can it be read in
Windows XP) as yours and have seen a few others with the exact same
problem.

A new (or used and believed to be working) drive from eBay cost more
than I wanted to spend on the machine, so when I wanted to install
Windows XP, I did so by formatting the hard drive in another computer,
making it bootable, copying the i386 folder from the XP CD, and
running the WINNT.EXE setup program. It took a while (setup suggests
loading SMARTDRV, and they aren't joking!) but ended up working fine.
And now that I have a fresh XP installation on it, I can simply plug
in a USB CD-ROM drive when I need one.

William