CD drive showing blank cd

[sbw07]

Hi I'm running Vista Home Premium on an Acer Aspire 5570Z notebook.
My CD drive normally works fine, but on some CD-R and DVD-R that i burned files to the CD shows up as blank in Windows Explorer. Opening the drive properties I see that it says there is 0 bytes of free space on the disk and the disk is full of files in the RAW format.

These discs open up fine on other computers and I can access the files on them. Also, when I boot my notebook into Safe Mode, sometimes the disc does not show up as empty and it's labeled correctly in Windows Explorer. However it is unable to open the disk and the notebook freezes. Other times in Safe Mode, a window will pop up sayimg that it can't read the disc.

Any Ideas?

[lorraine]

Hi,

I did a quick look online and see that other people have had your problem. Have you tried Acer support yet? I once worked on a friend's Acer laptop and found that their support was decent: http://www.acersupport.com/us/en/produc ... aspx?tab=1

It could be that the drive is starting to go or is dirty. Have you tried cleaning it with a lens cleaning CD?

If it seems more software-related you can try System Restore to a point prior to your trouble. Also, you can try the system file checker utility. This is how to run SFC, as posted by Gary elsewhere on this board:

"Try running the System File Checker which will replace and missing or
corrupt system files.

Go to Start and type cmd.exe In the results, right click the cmd.exe
file and select the Run As Administrator option. In the command dialog, type
the following.

sfc /scannow

Press ENTER."

Did you recently install any software or do any other changes to your system that might be causing conflicts?

[gcham05]

Hello,

I agree with Lorraine.

Try using a laser lens cleaning CD in the drive. If you don't have one, most places that sell CDs and DVDs have them, or even some "dollar" stores have them for a buck or two.

[lorraine]

Coincidentally I was just called to service a teacher's optical drive this week. It had disappeared from My Computer which therefore prevented me from trying to clean the drive since it wasn't even recognized. Restarting, using System Restore, and looking at the BIOS only confirmed that the drive was AWOL. Not having time to guess and check a one-by-one hardware fix I opened the case, re-seated all IDE cables and changed the Molex plug to the optical drive (using an unused plug in the case). I also re-seated the RAM while I was at it. When I next powered on the drive was back and working. This may not be the only solution, however, so please post back if this or any of our other suggestions help you.