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PowerBook Combo Drive not reading ANYTHING!

SuperCompu2

SuperCompu2

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
My trusty PowerBook is being finicky with all the disks I try to put into it. It will draw them in, groan like it's about to spin up, pause, then groan some more. I hear it spin up a tiny bit, but not to the rate it usually does. The fact that it's spinning at all makes me think it's a read head/lens dirty problem, but I want to make sure before I blow money on a cleaner which accomplishes nothing.

Thanks!
 
Hey, I have had thesame thing happen twice on two different machines. One was the drive failing, the other was my iBook was ever so slightly bent by the slot and the disc was dragging on something.
Hope this helps.
 
**Update**

Now it will only read Movie DVDs, and won't read any sort of CD.

Anyone know why this might be happening? It's awfully strange that it would randomly read movie DVDs but not CDs
 
SuperCompu2 said:
**Update**

Now it will only read Movie DVDs, and won't read any sort of CD.

Anyone know why this might be happening? It's awfully strange that it would randomly read movie DVDs but not CDs
Click to expand...

Same here for my PowerBook. Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but I was listening to an iTunes radio station while working on images in Photoshop. The images were located on a data CD in the combo drive. While in Photoshop, I opened FileBrowser when I heard the cd drive 'attempt' to spin up. The 'attempt' failed, and my combo drive has not been able to ready any - any type of CD media since. I can load DVD media all day long with no problems - watch movies, load software, copy data. But, CD media - forget it.

Not sure if something went haywire with the combination of iTunes, Photoshop and FileBrowser.
 
Information from the Genius Bar

So my PowerBook G4 has ceased to read any type of CD media, yet will still read DVD media. Well, I have learned from the Genius Bar that the combo-drive has two lasers - one for CD media and one for DVD media. I didn't know this. I was thinking the problem was a software issue, but apparently not. I guess the 'CD' laser on my PowerBook has given up. Now to decide if I'm going to do the upgrade to a SuperDrive myself or not.
Hope this little tid-bit helps.
 
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