I have Windows 98 and a Pioneer DVD-105 DVD drive. When inserting a CD or DVD, the drive ejects it after about 20 secs. The drive is recognised correctly in the control panel device manager. My PC crashed before the problem occurred and I had to restart it. Could the drive lens be dirty? It's the first time I've had this problem.

Paul

Restart in MS dos mode. Place a cd in the drive. See if you can list the contents of the disc {{change directory ( type "cd e:" w/o the quotes and press enter) Substitue your dvd drive letter for e:. When you are at the E:\, type "dir" and hit enter}}. This should give you the directory of the cd you inserted. Assuming it does not just eject.

If this works, and I think it will, you have a corrupt windows file which is resulting in the disc not being read/ejected. If so, you can try to remove the device and reinstall. You can also try restoring the registry from when it worked.

If is does not work in DOS mode, then there is most likely a problem with the drive itself. A problem with the drive could have caused the pc to crash.

You could also try a scanreg /restore and restore to a time before the problem.

About a week ago, my DVD drive disappeared from my PC (My Computer and Control Panel) without me touching any settings. I restarted the PC and had an error message on boot-up relating to ATAPI. Do you think this meant there was something wrong with my drive?

Could be something wrong with your drive or your motherboard (specifically, the IDE controller). It could also be a bad IDE cable.

Try a new IDE cable first. If it still does not work, try the drive in a different pc. If it does not work, then you know the problem is with the drive.

If it works in a different pc but not on yours, then try a PCI IDE controller card (about $30).