[maceye]

I have a Powerbook Ti DVI with a combo drive that has decided it doesn't like CD-R discs. It will not read discs that I burned with the same drive a few months ago, nor will it read discs burnt with other drives. It does this with all brands of CDs I have tried. It has no problems with normal CDs, and sometimes it will read a CD-R with no problem (not very often though). This problem has been getting worse for a while; it used to choke on an occasional disc, but now it won't read 99% of what I put in it! When I insert a disc the drive spins it up and i can hear the read/write head moving back and forth and back and forth for a long time. Usually the disc will mount (sometimes the disc mounts fast without the thrashing), but when it does everything on the disc is s-l-o-w to open, and many files will not copy (especially large files). More and more now the disc will just not mount, and after a long while the drive spits out the disc.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Would a lens cleaning disc work, or do I need to remove the drive and use compressed air? Or is it some other non-dirt related issue?

[maceye]

I just burned an audio cd in itunes and my stupid drive couldn't even read that!! It burned it ok though, so maybe it's not the lens?

[workerbee]

I have the same problem here with my TiBook 800, though it's not as bad (yet). Very frustrating when it happens with my own discs, very unhelpful for my work when it happens with clients' discs. I almost bought a new AIBook last friday because of this (and because my analog sound -loudspeakers, earphone jack, microphone- has been blown for a year now and I haven't heard a peep from my 'book since.

Sometimes hitting the 'book on top of the CD drive while it desperately tries to position the laser has helped�

[Dr.Michael]

Originally posted by maceye:
I have a Powerbook Ti DVI with a combo drive that has decided it doesn't like CD-R discs. It will not read discs that I burned with the same drive a few months ago, nor will it read discs burnt with other drives. It does this with all brands of CDs I have tried. It has no problems with normal CDs, and sometimes it will read a CD-R with no problem (not very often though). This problem has been getting worse for a while; it used to choke on an occasional disc, but now it won't read 99% of what I put in it! When I insert a disc the drive spins it up and i can hear the read/write head moving back and forth and back and forth for a long time. Usually the disc will mount (sometimes the disc mounts fast without the thrashing), but when it does everything on the disc is s-l-o-w to open, and many files will not copy (especially large files). More and more now the disc will just not mount, and after a long while the drive spits out the disc.

Does anyone know how I can fix this? Would a lens cleaning disc work, or do I need to remove the drive and use compressed air? Or is it some other non-dirt related issue?

This sounds pretty much like the problems I had with my 500 MHz TiBook. It had to do with bad alignment of the disk in the drive (as far as I read somewhere).
But there was no fix. I bought a new drive, which developed the same problems 6 months later.
Shocking to hear again that also the combos have that problem (there was a similar posting some time ago).
I sold my TiBook mainly because of the trouble with the drive. Hope the buyer does not need the drive a lot.

Michael