Laptop Repair Training Course – Troubleshooting CD and DVD drives

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Troubleshooting Laptop CD / DVD drives

Typical fault: doesn’t read discs or won’t work

There’s not a lot you can actually physically repair on a drive.  We don’t recommend you try as it too time consuming.  Remember all of our TekMoz IT training is geared toward you running a succesful business reparing laptops, in our experience drives are USUALLY best tackled by replacing them.

CD stuck in the drive

If you have a disc stuck in the drive then you can poke a very thin screwdriver or paperclip into the small hole found on the drive face.  This will manually eject the CD.

Drive does not work

Try removing the drive out of the laptop and re-inserting it again.  The drive may not be making a good contact with it’s connector.  If this doesn’t work then simply replace the drive.  Refer to our TekMoz laptop disassembly guide for removal.

 *REMEMBER*

When it comes to replacing a laptop drive remember that CD / DVD drives are pretty much universal, as long it is the same type of drive as the one you are replacing, i.e still a DVD rewriter and the connection is still SATA (or IDE) you can remove the faceplate and replace the drive as a whole unit.

Tips

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Because drives are pretty much universal try to keep a selection in stock.  You can buy these new, second hand or take them from old laptops.  You can come by laptops from customers or by buying ‘for spares or repairs’.

How long this should take:

5 minutes to replace if you have the item in stock.

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