My cd/dvd drive only reads dvds

[Guest]

The CD drive on my Pacard Bell Laptop is not reading CDs but it does read and
play DVDs. When I put in a CD and click on the D: drive it comes up like the
disk is blank, this is the same with all audio, installation and games disks
I've tried.
There was an extra driver installed on the laptop, I have uninstalled the
program which used it. I think the program was for ripping CDs or DVDs onto
the computer. I'm not sure if this would have caused the problem though.
Any help with this would be much appreciated.

 

[Rich Barry]

Since a combo Cd/Dvd drive uses different lenses for Cd's and Dvd's it
could be the Cd lense is dirty or flaky. You could
try to gently inject some canned air into the opened drive tray area.
Lense cleaner may help. If drive has some age on it
then probably not.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Since a combo Cd/Dvd drive uses different lenses for Cd's and Dvd's it
could be the Cd lense is dirty or flaky. You could
try to gently inject some canned air into the opened drive tray area.
Lense cleaner may help. If drive has some age on it
then probably not.

They don't use different lenses, but they do use different lasers. I would
suggest that the infra red laser applicable to CD disks has failed.

 

[Rich Barry]

I stand corrected. Lasers it is. Not lenses.