cd-dvd drive not spinning or reading properly

[Pythagorean]

Hi,

I just inherited a HP Pavilion dv2000 series laptop at my new job. The CD drive does (usually) open and close ok, and it does recognize when a cd is put in it in "my computer", but it does not successfully open programs. It sounds like the drive is not spinning fast enough. I connected an external cd drive and installed the software that way. The cd reads fine in the external drive, so its not a problem with the cd itself.

I contacted the prior owner of this computer and he said he also experienced problems with the cd drive. He suggested restarting the computer which usually worked for him. He also said he has had a couple of laptops, and many had faulty cd drives.

So, my question is is this a common problem with laptop cd drives? Is there an improved aftermarket drive I can buy and install?

Lastly, I have tried to clean up the performance of this computer as well. I defraged the hard drive and uninstalled symantec and installed avast, ccleaner and lavasoft as well as the "ultimate troubleshooting software" I saw advertised here on pcmech. (I have not decided if I think it was worth the $, but it is good in that it gives no bs info). Still there are 57 processes running on the task manager, which seems high.. Any suggestions? Its not like the computer is running badly, I just want to get it cleaned up for my use since who knows what the last guy did with it...

Thanks guys!
Susie

[Kuch]

Susie – As far as the CD drive does, you could try and clean it with some compressed air. It may just be a little dirty. If that doesn’t work, the drive may have just worn out (which happens).

Your options at this point are 1) you could continue to use the external CD drive you have or 2) replace the CD Drive with a new one. Unless you are technically proficient and want to try and swap out the suspect CD drive with a new one, you may just want to stick with the external CD drive.

As for the running processes, CCleaner has a tab that shows all the programs that run at startup. You can use that to pick and choose what programs should run and startup. That should take care of some of the sluggishness.