Hey,
I'm having a problem with the combo drive on my dual 867.
The drive seems to be very erratic in it's "acceptance" of various commercial CDs and DVDs. Sometimes, I'll insert the CD/DVD and it recognizes it and opens the appropriate app (iTunes or DVD player) and everything is hunky dory.
At other times, I'll insert the CD/DVD and nothing will show up on the desktop and the drive will no longer eject. This forces me to restart and hold down the mouse key during startup to get the drive open.
On some music CDs (U2's Pop, for example), it will play the first 6 or 7 songs fine and then will have problems playing the last 4 songs.
When I tried to rip Pop to the hard drive, it ripped the first 6 or 7 at something like 13x, but then stalled on the last 4 songs, taking upwards of 5 to 10 minutes to get through one song. If it does actually rip those last few songs, lots of screeching is heard in the background during playback.
REM's Green isn't even recognized by the computer. Star Wars Episode II DVD works sometimes and doesn't work other times.
I searched through Apple's support forums and tried multiples things:
-zapping the PRAM
-logging in as a different user
-buying a CD drive cleaner (those discs that have little brush bristles on them)
-wiping the actual CD/DVD
I called AppleCare and they also had me open the computer, unplug the combro drive cable and then plug it back in, remove my 3rd party memory, insert software restore CDs to see if they work, try the Hardware Test disk (everything checked out okay), reset the open firmware, all to no avail.
They also wanted me to do an archive and reinstall of the OS, but I told them I had recently done a reformat and reinstall and that didn't solve the problem, so they didn't ask me to do it again.
They basically said that I need to bring the computer into an Apple Service Center (either the Apple Store, CompUSA, Computize, etc.), explain the problem to them, tell them what I've done and tried so far and see if they can fix the problem.
Apparently, AppleCare still can't tell if it's a hardware or software problem.
Question: Is there anything else I can try before having to lug that heavy PowerMac through the mall to the Apple Store or anywhere else for that matter.
I was hoping that they could figure out that it's a hardware issue (at least that's what I think it is) and just mail me a replacement combo drive that I can install myself, but they didn't suggest that.
Anyway, any thoughts would be great.
TIA.
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