wrote:
Dell Inspiron about 6 yrars old. First startup or waking from sleep,
in a given day, and the CD drive is "jazzed" up then coasts back down
taking a couple of seconds. Makes no difference if the drive has a
disk or not. In the paast I noted this only infrequently, about every
month or so, but now it's every time. Anyone know what this is all
about ? PS - everything else completely normal.

Try a replacement optical drive ?

That's the simplest test.

Now, if the new drive does that too, I'll be
"stumped" as to the reason why :-)

Optical drives only cost around $20, and they're pretty good.

The only big problem you'll have, is if the optical drive has
an IDE ribbon cable for the data connection. They don't
make those any more. I had to go to my surplus place
and see if there are any left, to get one. I have no
control over what I get either - it could be Liteon
or LG, or whatever is in the pile that day. He won't
let you look at the stock either :-) It's a secret.

You can buy a SATA optical drive, buy an IDE to SATA
adapter (that plugs into the SATA hole on the drive),
then plug your ribbon cable into the adapter. That
does protocol conversion. But those adapters,
these days you're getting some weirdo chips on
those, so you'd better read the reviews to see
if the adapter you've spotted, works well
with ATAPI (optical) drives.

Optical drives come in slightly different lengths.
Some of the modern ones are a little bit shorter
front to back, and that extra room freed up, may
give enough room to stuff in an adapter.

Paul