OT External CD-ROM

[Dave H (MI)]

While I am on here for the second time in a week with an OT post, thanks to all the camera guys who helped me last week. I started my shopping and looked at the Nikon D80 and a few others. Need to find a REAL camera shop though before I decide on which to go with. Right now I have a crisis with my computer. Work requires me to load a lot of CD updates and the CD drive built into the box is not working right. It plays music cds but the program cds won't get recognized. Computer needs to be replaced but for now I would like to get an external cd-rom drive just to load my programs for the next couple of weeks. Any type of repair or replacement now would cost me too much in down time so this is what I think I need to do. Amazon has one for about $15 but (hating to look a cheap horse in the mouth) can this be a good one? Anyone have a reasonably priced one they could recommend?

 

[Howard H.]

Hey Dave -

Sometimes - if you are lucky - blowing compressed air around in there will clean the laser "eye" enough to get it going again.

That's curious that it's reading audio CDs.

The other thing is - it's very easy to swap the CDROM drive most of the time. And any old junker PC that you have or can scrounge will have a drive that is almost certainly compatible.

The other way would be read the CD's on another PC and copy it to a USB flash drive to pull up on your PC.

HH

 

[wfw]

cdrom's should be cheap, I was looking for a dvdrom and found several for $20 at tigerdirect.com. newegg.com is another good site