Problems with tray ejection most often appear due to hardware faults in the drive. By the phrase “the disk drive does not open” we mean that in the operating environment the drive is perfectly visible and does not have problems reading/writing disks, but there are problems with its tray ejecting. In this case, it must be remembered that the drive tray is fed by a separate mechanism with a motor and a control chip.

Rubber belt problem

Many drives use a small rubber belt in the disc tray feed mechanisms. It is its wear that most often causes problems with the tray leaving. During the operation of the drive, it very quickly loses elasticity and stretches. This belt is used between the tray feed mechanism motor and the tray transport system itself.

The failure of this belt immediately affects the operation of the transportation system, which does not receive the necessary rotational movement. The tray may either not move out at all, or may only move forward a little. To solve this problem, it is enough to replace the rubber belt itself.

Gear problem

In disk drives, gears can be used instead of a belt to supply rotational motion from the motor to the tray transport system. And although such a mechanism is more durable, it also becomes unusable over time. Due to the nature of the mechanism, gear teeth can be sheared.

In the same picture you can see gears, the teeth of which can easily wear out and lead to the problem of tray failure.

Damage to the plastic teeth can also cause tray feeding problems. The tray may either not come out at all, or only start halfway. Solving the problem usually requires replacing damaged gears.

Dust accumulation and some other reasons

It must be said that the most common reason for the failure of the drive to extend the tray is the accumulation of dust and various contaminants on the moving parts of the tray transport system. Accumulated dust can cause the tray to become completely jammed. It can also lead to the drive's failure to read data from disks normally.

Therefore, drives always require proper maintenance. To do this, they are disassembled and cleaned of contaminants, not only the moving parts are wiped, but also the optical system.

The picture above also shows the belt and engine.

Also, the cause of failure of the drive tray may be problems with the power supplied to the “Eject” button, with the control chip and with the mechanism’s motor. Sometimes the problem may be in the magnet that is hidden inside the pressure cap of the drive motor. Over time, its properties can change greatly and it can become an unbearable burden for the drive mechanics.

Often the mode bar and limit switch fail, which allows you to set the drive traverse in one of two positions: in the position of readiness of the servomotor for spinning up the disk, or in the position of readiness for supplying the disk to the output.

Safely removing the disc

If the tray is jammed and there is a disk left in it, it will be very easy to remove it using an ordinary paper clip. Each drive, both for desktop PCs and laptops, is equipped with an emergency disk ejection system.

Manufacturers of drives leave a small hole on the body of their devices into which you need to insert a paperclip and lightly press the device that locks the tray. A number of slotted optical discs may be equipped with an external emergency eject button. Such drives are used in laptops.

The arrows schematically show a regular paperclip and the hole into which the paperclip should penetrate.

The illustration below shows a slot-loading optical drive and an emergency eject button.

Laptop drive

The laptop drive is a little more complicated. Most often, laptop drives do not have a tray feeding system, which is replaced by a semi-automatic system that locks the disks. In this case, special springs are used, which are designed to block the disk. Pressing the eject button allows you to unlock the disk, and therefore it simply falls out of the drive along with the tray, and then the tray must be removed manually. If the tray does not come out, then the problem may be in the operation of the locking springs.

If the drive does not open and even a paperclip inserted into the emergency eject hole does not help, you will have to disassemble the drive itself to remove the disc. In this case, the solution to the problem is often a complete replacement of the drive.

Replacing the rubber belt

You can buy a rubber belt, or you can find it on the O-rings on the fitting connectors.

As an example of dealing with the problem of the tray not being removed from the drive, let’s replace the rubber belt. To do this, we need two screwdrivers (one flat and the other figured), with which we need to disassemble it; an ordinary paperclip, which will allow us to remove the tray from a drive that is not connected to power; and the rubber belt itself.

Our first step will be to remove the front part of the tray.

To do this, remove the tray from the drive using a paperclip and, with careful pressure, remove the front part of the tray, lifting its central part to release it from the latches. In addition, using a flat-head screwdriver, you need to remove the front part of the drive itself.

We remove the front part of the tray by slightly lifting its middle part, freeing it from the latches that are located approximately in the area of ​​​​the fingers

Unfasten the front part of the drive itself. To do this, lightly press down the latches highlighted in red squares.

The next step is to remove the drive cover using a shaped screwdriver to pick up the Phillips screws. There are four of them on the lid. It is very important not to lose the protective gaskets that are located between the main chips of the drive and its cover. Often they simply remain on the surface of the lid.

Rubber gaskets that remain directly on the surface of the lid - do not move them

After removing the cover, we will need to remove the drive itself from the protective metal casing. To do this, you simply need to turn the drive over to “shake” it out of the protective casing.

Having removed the casing, we will get to the tray feed mechanism, where we will see the rubber belt that we want to replace. Having removed the old belt, we replace it with a new one.

Assembly is carried out in the reverse order, and therefore does not present any particular difficulties. True, before assembly you can also clean the optical system of the laser and at the same time the transport system of the tray from dust.

Instead of a conclusion

The reasons why the drive does not open can be very different, but most of them are related to mechanical failures of the drive. However, it is necessary to remember that the drives of desktop PCs and laptops differ greatly from each other in the tray feeding mechanism. While traditional drives use an automatic system, laptop drives operate in semi-automatic mode. If the drive does not open, then a stretched belt or a gear with damaged teeth is most often to blame.

Also, this behavior of the drive can be caused by a significant accumulation of dust and debris on the moving parts of the tray feed mechanism. Sometimes such a malfunction is caused by a breakdown of the mode bar and limit switch, and sometimes the properties of the clamping magnet change in such a way that they do not allow the drive mechanics to “rescue” the disk from the drive.

Sometimes on forums you can come across the question: “The disk drive does not work, what should I do?” Indeed, even such a seemingly reliable device as a CD drive can fail. As usually happens, the causes of a malfunction can be very different, and it is possible to accurately determine the source of the failure only after analyzing some indirect factors.

If the disk drive does not work, we will indicate what to do next.

Overheat

Some users have noticed that after burning several discs in a row, the drive may refuse to read new ones or begin to write subsequent ones with errors. What’s interesting: after 10-20 minutes everything returns to normal on its own. Miracles and silicon logic are not compatible, so this strange behavior of the reading device can be explained quite simply - it overheats. Despite the fact that the laser beam has little power, with its continuous use the internal temperature of the drive increases, which affects the operation of all its systems - hence the problem. It is often aggravated by the fact that the air flows in the closed case of the system unit of the average user do not blow on the drives. Thus, to the question: “The disk drive does not work, what should I do?” - you can answer as follows: it is necessary to fix the device so that there is free space around it in which the temperature could dissipate, or install an additional fan.

Plume

This is the most common reason why topics are created on the Internet: “The disk drive is not working, what should I do?” With the advent of the SATA standard, the computer community happily forgot the problems associated with the incompatibility of IDE devices. Now all the nuances of configuration have been taken over by the controller, freeing the user from the need to monitor the correct setting of operating modes - Slave or Master. However, sometimes you can come across the question: “When using a CD or DVD, the computer freezes: what should I do?” In this case, you need to turn off the computer, open the cover of the system case and remove the SATA cable from the board and drive, and then connect it back. The cheap interface wires used in most computers do not have metal retainers, which is why the constant vibration of the drive breaks the contact and the device stops working. If this does not help, then you need to connect the cable to another SATA port on the motherboard and replace the wire with a new one (the absence of external damage does not mean anything).

BIOS

All modern BIOS provide the ability to switch controller modes: IDE, RAID, AHCI. If there are no problems with hard drives, then some older models of compact drives may refuse to work normally in any of the modes due to compatibility issues. To solve this, you can try to switch the controller to the desired command system (go to the BIOS - DEL button when turning on the computer) or flash the BIOS file with the current version.

Software glitch

No less often the cause of problems is errors in the driver. In Windows, you need to go to “Computer - Properties - Device Manager - DVD Drives” and remove the drive from the list. After a reboot, it will be re-detected and the problem may go away.

The disk drive does not open, what should I do?

In this case, you need to right-click on the drive letter in Explorer and select the “Eject” command. If the carriage extends, then the mechanics are faulty, otherwise, most likely, you will have to think about changing the drive to a new one.

Why does the DVD drive not work on a Windows 7 laptop and what to do in such cases?

After experimenting with the drive, I identified the five most common reasons why the DVD drive does not work on a Windows 7 (XP, 8) laptop.

What to do to correct it is described under each of the reasons below; of course, others are not excluded, but these are individual problems.

ATTENTION: if you still can’t restore the drive’s functionality, then I recommend the solution that I have already

Reason one

On an asus laptop or any other computer in Windows 8 or Windows 7 (no difference), the disk drive does not work because its earthly journey has ended (this happens too).

This is a rather extensive answer, but it happens and so you cannot do without a replacement. It’s good if you can remove it and try it on another computer.

What to do? Buy a new one and replace it, they are not expensive today, about 15 dollars. There are no difficulties in replacing it, you can do it yourself.

Remove a few screws and disconnect the two cords. That's all.

Reason two

The disk drive on an asus or acer laptop stopped working (it doesn’t depend on the name, I write this out of habit, I have three of my own asus and one acer) - through the BIOS.

The drive itself is quite good, but Windows does not see it. It's just blatantly disabled in the BIOS. It happened to me once, on a new one I just bought.

What to do? Enter the BIOS and turn on the DVD drive. Usually it is there opposite the CD-ROM line. ENABLED - ENABLED.

Third reason

If the disk drive stops working, the reason may be Windows itself. The system simply doesn't see it.

This is usually driver related. You can see them in the device manager. How to fix it?

Install new (correct) drivers in Device Manager and update the configuration.

Fourth reason

The disk drive will not work if the laser window () is clogged. The reason for this is excess dust in the work area.

How to fix? Open the drive and clean it with ordinary cotton wool (wound on a match).

Fifth reason

The laser head has failed. There are many reasons why this happened.

What to do? Replace, although it is better to replace the drive completely - the laser head is expensive (80% of the cost of the drive)

Of course, the five reasons described in this article are not all possible options why the drive does not work.

This could be a lack of power supply, bad contacts on the cables, and much more.

It is very easy to fix these problems if you have another drive - a working one (you can remove it from a friend’s computer).

Then it is much easier to check which element affected the performance of the drive.

As an option, remember that you can always use an external drive or flash drive - today they are quite capacious and allow you to easily install even operating systems.

Only if the content is on DVD, then you won’t be able to do without a disk drive. Good luck.

At one time, CDs and DVDs were the most popular and convenient storage media. Gradually, the whole world is moving away from using disks, opting for USB drives or cloud storage services. However, despite this circumstance, some users still actively use CDs and DVDs. Of course, it is not always possible to avoid problems when using disks. In addition to the integrity of the media itself, it is very important that the drive works. But unfortunately, there are often cases when it simply cannot be opened. What to do in such a situation? In this article, we will take a closer look at how to open a laptop drive if it does not open.

There are several reasons for this malfunction. The button could have simply failed, or the mechanism that pulled out the slot had broken. In more severe cases, the problem may be with the board or an incorrectly inserted disk.

Solution

Method 1

You should start by trying to open the drive through . Go to “My Computer” and right-click on the optical drive. Select “Extract” from the list that appears. If this method does not solve the problem, try the next one.

Method 2

Not everyone knows that any drive is equipped with a special emergency hole, inside which a button to open the drive is hidden. The principle is the same as the Reset button on a Wi-Fi router. Please note that it is better to do this when the computer is turned off. If there is a disk left inside, you risk damaging it when the PC is turned on. Take a pin, needle, or any other object thin enough to press the button. After this, the tray should open slightly. Then you will have to get it out with your hands. There is nothing wrong with this, since it is not difficult at all. If this option does not give the desired result, move on to the next one.

Method 3

You will have to resort to disassembling the case and removing the drive. The drive itself is very easy to disassemble. Just unscrew a few screws. The first step is to reach the front of the tray. To do this, use the emergency button. After this, bend the three special latches to remove the panel. Using a screwdriver, remove the front part of the drive. There are special latches on the top and sides that need to be pressed out. Then remove the four screws located around the perimeter of the drive. Now, using a little force, remove the metal cover. Ready. You can take out your disk. Assembly is performed strictly in reverse order.

Results

Now you know how to open the disk drive of a laptop or computer if it does not open. As you can see, such a problem is not at all difficult to solve on your own at home, without the help of a specialist.

Write in the comments whether this article helped you, share your own experience of fixing such problems with other users and ask any questions you have about the topic discussed.

The need to open the disk drive (optical disk drive) of a laptop without a button may suddenly arise for any computer user. The most common reason is a broken button that is responsible for opening it. In this article, you will learn how to open a disk drive on a computer or laptop if it does not open without pressing a button on it.

Method one - through Explorer (My Computer)

In order to open the drive in a computer or laptop without a button, you need to go to “My Computer” through a shortcut on the desktop or the Start menu. A window will open with all the local drives on your computer. Find your disk drive among them.

Disk drive in My Computer

Right-click on it and select in the context menu that opens "Extract".

This will open the optical drive of your computer or laptop.

Method two - through the emergency opening hole

Every drive, be it for a laptop or computer, has a hole for emergency opening. Thanks to it, the drive opens even when it is turned off.

You can find it on the front side, usually near the open button.

Computer drive emergency release hole

In order to open it in this way, you will need a paper clip or an awl that will fit into this cavity.

Emergency opening hole for laptop drive

All you need to do is insert this same paper clip or awl into the hole until it stops and as soon as it rests, press harder.

With these simple methods you can quickly open the drive on a computer or laptop with a non-functional button.

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