hardware or software ? drive coming open randomly
Hi all ; glad to see some increased activity here.
I have a Lenovo T500 laptop ; Vista vintage ; running Win 8 Pro and it has an intermittant problem where the CD/DVD drive pops open randomly. The drive is ~ never used. When it's acting-up, it will pop open several times in a few minutes. When it's behaving, it will be fine for a couple days. Any Thoughts ? John T. |
hardware or software ? drive coming open randomly
hubops wrote:
I have a Lenovo T500 laptop ; Vista vintage ; running Win 8 Pro and it has an intermittant problem where the CD/DVD drive pops open randomly. The drive is ~ never used. When it's acting-up, it will pop open several times in a few minutes. When it's behaving, it will be fine for a couple days. Install any software that monitors the state of your drives (by looking at the SMART attributes of all accessible drives)? I remember a long time ago, for example with Creative software, had something that would keep the CD drive spinning for longer after it was last accessed under the premise that if it was just accessed then it might be accessed again within the next few minutes. Problem was that other software, like drive monitors, would access the drive and Creative's software would keep the CD drive constantly spinning. I've had problems with Avira anti-virus in the past. I reported to them via their forums that my CD/DVD burner drive was spinning up (and then spun down) at 1-minute intervals. Took awhile to figure out the culprit, but it was Avira polling the interally-attached drives. A few other users reported the same problem, but not in sufficient number and couldn't reproduce the problem (which, to me, was very reproducible after ever having anything poll the CD drive), so Avira wouldn't expend any resources to investigate the rarely occurring problem. Not enough users reporting the problem. Since they've changed their forum setup (https://answers.avira.com/en/questions), I doubt I could even find my old forum thread. That was back in 2009 where I noted some software would queries all discoverable drives to determine their type by accessing their media (which for an empty CD drive would make that grinding noise of the head moving to check for media), and then Avira would begin polling those drives that would keep them spinning. The bug occurred only on removable drives (disc, floppy). Avira was unable or ignored the type of access to the drive, like to simply poll as to what type it was, and assume any access could be a write access. When Avira got triggered because something else accessed the drive, I'd hear the CD drive making the head-seak noise at 1-minute intervals. Very annoying. Problem was exascerbated if you had an old PC with a floppy drive which was even more noisy at those 1-minute polling intervals by Avira. Any program that polled the device for its SMART data, like disc burning software, would trigger Avira into the everlasting 1-minute polling (until a reboot). Only solution was to uninstall Avira and use something else (like Avast). It was an old problem which Avira never specifically addressed, but perhaps new code updates since then have accidentally stepped on the bug. You don't say if this is a new problem on an old laptop or if this problem existed from the moment you got the laptop. If it is a new problem, load the OS in its safe mode which eliminate the startup programs when Windows loads. If the problem goes away, you have a startup program that is causing the problem. |
hardware or software ? drive coming open randomly
On Thu, 18 Jul 2019 10:49:11 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
hubops wrote: I have a Lenovo T500 laptop ; Vista vintage ; running Win 8 Pro and it has an intermittant problem where the CD/DVD drive pops open randomly. The drive is ~ never used. When it's acting-up, it will pop open several times in a few minutes. When it's behaving, it will be fine for a couple days. Install any software that monitors the state of your drives (by looking at the SMART attributes of all accessible drives)? I remember a long time ago, for example with Creative software, had something that would keep the CD drive spinning for longer after it was last accessed under the premise that if it was just accessed then it might be accessed again within the next few minutes. Problem was that other software, like drive monitors, would access the drive and Creative's software would keep the CD drive constantly spinning. I've had problems with Avira anti-virus in the past. I reported to them via their forums that my CD/DVD burner drive was spinning up (and then spun down) at 1-minute intervals. Took awhile to figure out the culprit, but it was Avira polling the interally-attached drives. A few other users reported the same problem, but not in sufficient number and couldn't reproduce the problem (which, to me, was very reproducible after ever having anything poll the CD drive), so Avira wouldn't expend any resources to investigate the rarely occurring problem. Not enough users reporting the problem. Since they've changed their forum setup (https://answers.avira.com/en/questions), I doubt I could even find my old forum thread. That was back in 2009 where I noted some software would queries all discoverable drives to determine their type by accessing their media (which for an empty CD drive would make that grinding noise of the head moving to check for media), and then Avira would begin polling those drives that would keep them spinning. The bug occurred only on removable drives (disc, floppy). Avira was unable or ignored the type of access to the drive, like to simply poll as to what type it was, and assume any access could be a write access. When Avira got triggered because something else accessed the drive, I'd hear the CD drive making the head-seak noise at 1-minute intervals. Very annoying. Problem was exascerbated if you had an old PC with a floppy drive which was even more noisy at those 1-minute polling intervals by Avira. Any program that polled the device for its SMART data, like disc burning software, would trigger Avira into the everlasting 1-minute polling (until a reboot). Only solution was to uninstall Avira and use something else (like Avast). It was an old problem which Avira never specifically addressed, but perhaps new code updates since then have accidentally stepped on the bug. You don't say if this is a new problem on an old laptop or if this problem existed from the moment you got the laptop. If it is a new problem, load the OS in its safe mode which eliminate the startup programs when Windows loads. If the problem goes away, you have a startup program that is causing the problem. Thanks for the reply. It's a new-ish ~ 6 - 8 months problem on a used laptop that I've had for ~ 3 years. SuperAntiSpyware is the only program that I - occasionally - allow to update - every few months or so. The laptop is an everyday web surfer FireFox; email T-Bird; occasional photos Irfanview dash-cam VLC Media Player and Open Office use. Task Manager shows Start-Up as follows : : Google Update Core disabled : Java Update Scheduler disabled : Status Monitor Application disabled Brother laser printer : SuperAntiSpyware 3 enabled start-up impact = : 1 SAS appl. High : 2 update medium : 3 update low I haven't experimented yet with Safe Mode boot-up. John T. |
hardware or software ? drive coming open randomly
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