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My cd rom drive door keeps opening and closing by itself. I had taken off this drive for over 3 months on account of this. I put it back in place recently after i reformatted my hard-drive.. it behaved well for about three weeks but now it is repeating the annoying behaviour. A friend told me it is a "joke" virus, but i could use some help from here.
There was a "joke virus" a number of years ago which would trip the cdrom tray at random, so this possibility does exist. It could however (since you've got it back into a fairly recently formatted machine) be that the drive itself is becoming faulty.
An up to date complete virus scan (either by the utility you normally use or an online realtime scan) should take this element out of the equation. Also trying the drive for a while in a known clean machine will help to eliminate the possibilities and determine were the problem lies.
It's a good day when you learn something
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It could be either of the possibilities Dan mentioned.
I had this with a faulty CD drive (I think it failed to initialize properly sometimes) although "it was only
after bootup or rebooting".DerekW
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OK, now you got me going Derek. ;>)
I have three E-IDE CDROM drives (all exact same make/model, purchased at the same time from the same retailer) which work flawlessly for a while, then seem to die. Take it out, clean it (open the drive etc), put it in another machine, and it works. For a while. All three drives do the same. They work, then they don't. (I've stopped the cleaning process between swaps.) IDE channel/Prim/Sec doesn't matter.
They work, then they don't. I haven't pursued it much as drives are cheaper than the time involved to find out why a particular drive isn't working. (In most cases.) I hesitated posting this as I don't have conclusive results as to why.
It's a good day when you learn something
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CD drives have a switch that senses when you push on the drawer which tells the drive to close. These can in time become oversensitive and can become triggered by minor vibrations causing the symptoms you described.
Back when drives were priced in the hundreds, the cure was to open the drive and adjust this switch (read bend it out a little). Few people bother doing this anymore.
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Mine had additional symptoms, which leads me away from the drawer switch in my own particular case. From time to time there would be a freeze after Windows had started, usually before arrival of the last system tray icon. It took some time for me to realise that this freeze had anything to do with the CD drive (CD-RW in my case).
In fact I'm still using the drive, with two workarounds. Uninstalling the CD-RW in BIOS stopped the drawer opening problem. Would you believe the drive still appeared and worked fine in Windows?
The freeze workaround was to start InCD manually from a shortcut when required and not during boot. Prior to this I experimented with various batch file delays (to InCD start) which helped markedly, but the above shortcut has now completely hidden the problem.
Over the years I've found two others who had exactly the same symptoms as mine. My fix (bodge) was only finalised a few weeks ago and the problem had been going on for years, surviving a mobo change and Windows overlay. I kept a log of dates/times and attempts at fixing. About everything had been tried except replacing the drive, which would probably have fixed it.
From the above I now believe that it was failure, or sometimes a delay, in initialisation. None of this needs to have any bearing on the posters problem of-course - who knows!
DerekW
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Hi Derek. Do you want to try another packet writer? If so i will send you abCD, which is somewhat better than InCD, maybe help.
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Thanks guys.. this forum is great..i was so happy to see this flurry of responses!
I do not have any cd-rw software in my startup.. so I will try
a. The full system scan and/or
b. Disabling the offending cd-r from cmos
I will post the results when i complete.
Until then,
cheerio
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well here is the first report.
a.Antivirus scan showed nothing
b.disabled the cdrom in cmos setup too..problem continues.I am beginning to get convinced that this is a drive malfunction. For the time being i have replaced the drive. Some relief now. I will connect this to a plain smps power supply (of course, without the data cable, as suggested) and keep it under observation for some time. I sure would like to get to the bottom of this.
Thanks guys.. will get in touch with you as soon as something new comes up. Right now i am relieved that that it may not be a system problem.
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jubalsams
Thx for the kind offer but as my workarounds have shut up both problems I'll let sleeping dogs lie - in any event I'm in UK.I rather suspect it wouldn't work because of the other symptom (drawer opening on boot) which is before Windows starts.
Thx again and apologies to phantom for hijacking you post rather - still, maybe it was of interest....
DerekW
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Derek,
Be my guest. Whether the issue belongs here or not, it is ok with me because it was informative. Hope admin wouldn't mind such minor lapses :-)
Thanks a lot for the prompt responses and the support. I get a feeling that i am going to be a frequent visitor to this forum - with or without problems of my own!!!
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Yeah, it's a great learning center here. Look out though, you may become a "regular", just like at the pub. ;>)
It's a good day when you learn something
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computer solutions
I agree, but for different reasons. I used to just push the tray (the supplier said it was fine to do this).BUT if you don't push it right in the centre it can cause a skew, leading to mechanical failure of the mechanism (almost certainly the reason for the demise of my first CD-RW way back - bust parts).
Yep, "push the button" is the safest practice and I've done this ever since.
DerekW
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Fast on the Drawer:
I have a similar CD drawer problem and am 99% sure the cause is an intruder. Evidence:
1. CD drawers worked fine until:
2. Internet Explorer and desktop were hijacked by intruder telling me to buy a certain security system and saying my life was in danger (along with several misspellings of his).
3. When the drawer opens, more often than not, a few seconds later, a popup appears telling me to buy the security system.
4. The second CD drawer does not open by itself but the computer says there is no CD in it when there is.
5. SpySweeper identified the following intruder: 4f1a2a0a769 in two instances. When I clicked to delete them, they disappeared--and then reappeared. All other intruders, once clicked, stayed away.Strong evidence that the drawers are being hijacked and I am intentionally being prevented from backing up my files using CDs in them; and that this intruder was designed to elude the most popular spyware and security, in my case, AdAwareSE, SpySweeper, SpyDoctor, Nortons 2005 SystemWorks.
If anyone knows how to get rid of 4f1a2a0a769, so I do not have to redo my hard drive, I would love to know! Thank you.
David D.
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In the limited time I have. First of all try removing the identified files in safe mode.
Start your own thread. More people will be able to help when they can find you.
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David D.
I agree that some nasty is the likely cause in your case.
There are two other freebies worth trying, "SpyBot Search & Destroy" and this trojan finder/fixer:
A2FREE - JUST DOWN PAGEThen there is HijackThis (freebie). You can put the produced log in the following analyzers:
HJT DETECTIVELet HJT remove any nasties (in red), produce a new log then try it in this one:
This one shows all running processes (good or bad) so use Google to find out about anything dubious or unknown.
I agree with Rimfire, best to raise a new post with Security & Virus forum.
DerekW
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