I was burning CDs this afternoon. I put a blank CD in, and the drive started spinning very fast, then it stopped. Now it won't read CDs and is making a grinding sound when you close it. It also makes this sound when you startup the computer. I believe there may have been something on top of one of the CDs that I inserted in the drive. The drive won't read CDs now. Is the drive ruined? I can't see anything in the drive itself. But it is making a grinding sound. I even opened the drive and held the computer sideways to see if anything was in there and might fall out. Is there any safe way to get in there and see? Or should I just get another drive? HELP!!!!

hello dont run computer . you will have to pull the cd-rw out of computer and pull the cover off and look for the object. and hope it was only rubbing on cd and did not bend laser out of alianement.make sure powers off and computers unpluged and you ground your self to a bare part of computers frame to kill static electricity when do all this. have a nice day

My sisters hi-fi CD tray was struck by accident while in the out position. The result was the tray and laser 'device' were knocked 'out of time' with each other ie the laser is held out of the way while the tray moves in & out on a rack. Only when the tray is in far enough in does the mechanism lift the laser device into place. I fixed this by unscrewing the rack & gear clamp inside the drive, realigning rack & gear and refitting the clamp. Best of luck.