CD drive keeps opening and closing

-1

In the robotics/engineering lab at school, there are about 40 HP computers. In the back of the room are six computers whose CD drives will continually open and close seemingly only when I am near them. Perhaps it is a function of me not noticing when I am not close by, but even if that is true... they are still opening and closing repeatedly.

I rebooted and changed users and am not sure why this is happening. What is going on?? It feels like the lab is haunted!

tekknolagi

Posted 2014-05-02T01:31:00.533

Reputation: 1 130

1Check if it does happen when you're in the BIOS or the boot menu. If it still does, it's either a hardware problem in the CD drive (maybe something is preventing it from closing completely and it desperately tries to close itself) or some scary paranormal stuff. If it doesn't, then it's a software problem. – None – 2014-05-02T01:55:04.307

5"In the robotics/engineering lab at school" Perhaps it's haunted by students smarter than you. ;) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-05-02T02:20:04.893

Answers

Start them up in safe mode. Restart then press F8 repeatedly while booting, then select Safe Mode.

Hopefully they won't open/close once in safe mode. If they don't, it's likely an auto-start program on the machine that somebody's put on there to screw with you. Check the startup folder for any strange batch files or executables.

Better yet, download CCleaner and have a look at the startup programs under Tools --> Startup, to see if there's anything out of the ordinary there.

Azz

Posted 2014-05-02T01:31:00.533

Reputation: 3 777

I will take a look tomorrow. What's normal and what is not? I normally use Linux. – tekknolagi – 2014-05-02T02:11:47.847

It's kinda difficult to say, because a lot of the time, hardware manufacturers will have their own little bits of software that run on boot. You could see lots of Intel stuff, as well as names of software installed that has a tray icon, or something that runs in the background. Post a screenshot if you like so we can take a look. – Azz – 2014-05-02T02:16:19.380

There's a few possibilities. Lets start with something non technical first - The Street Light Interference effect - If a tree crashes in the woods with no one to observe it, no one will know. If two trees nearly crash on you, you may decide the woods are dangerous.

Secondly there's some task thats causing the cd drive to eject - these are quite often cd burning programs, like imgburn, though this particular situation is unusual. Least on linux, there's a command that would do this called eject, and its often used as a lazy man's servo

Thirdly these drives are physically damaged - the drive is trying to eject, its failing to eject fully, and its retracting to prevent damage. While in theory this should be accompanied by the most horrible screeching of gears, thats optional. Considering they're systems in a lab, they're likely to be abused.

I'd suggest reporting this to your sysadmin and letting him deal with it.

Journeyman Geek

Posted 2014-05-02T01:31:00.533

Reputation: 119 122