Computer trouble

[tarheelpride]

I have a lenovo thinkpad T61p that UNC gave me a few years go. Recently, i've been experiencing problems with the CD drive on it. It will randomly attempt to safely eject the CD drive and an error message shows up that it's still in use and it can't eject.

This message is constant and annoying. Looking online for similar problems and solutions didn't help me. I even had the CD drive replaced a few times and had IT here at UNC look at it (they kept it for a week but all they did was replace the drive). The error messages still pop up, even when I do have the drive in use. I didn't do anything to the CD drive to eject. Do anyone here have some advice on this or went through the same problems with their laptop?

[Seamonk]

It's probably some program on your comp trying to send a eject signal. You could either go through your programs in Task Manager and see if there are any unfamiliar ones, try end tasking them and seeing if the messages continue when you do so. If you fug up, just restart your comp and try again.

If that doesn't eventually work, come on here again, and we'll try something else. If all else fails, a format may be in order.

[Guild]

Maybe the driver is corrupt?

[tarheelpride]

I was thinking it could be the driver. i tried disabling and re-abling it but the computer wouldn't let me for some reason. if i can find the driver for it again, i would try to reinstall it

[Seamonk]

It's probably not the driver if you sent it to your geek people on campus and the problem persisted with a new drive. Secondly if the drive is working, then it's probably not the driver anyway.

[tarheelpride]

It happened again while I was playing the Sims but it let me keep playing the game. It doesn't pop up as much, but i can feel the CD drive stopping and starting up again. And this was after a restart and looking for unfamiliar programs. I have no idea at this point

[Seamonk]

I don't even know man. It's software related, and you should probably just format and reinstall windows if it bothers you that much. You probably have something that's triggering it to do it..

Also question, does it happen only when you have a disk in the drive?

[tarheelpride]

I don't even know man. It's software related, and you should probably just format and reinstall windows if it bothers you that much. You probably have something that's triggering it to do it..

Also question, does it happen only when you have a disk in the drive?

It doesn't. It happened randomly one day, even as I just cut the laptop on. I doubt it's any kind of program. I might try to run a spyware and virus sweep to see if that points to anything.

[Seamonk]

Ok. A couple questions

what Operating System are you running?

what Power Management options do you have enabled?

[cookinwithgas]

Maybe you have A/V or indexing turned on for that drive or something - other possiblity is that you ran a program off of it that installed something that is occasionally is looking for a file on the CD drive.

[Porn Shop Clerk]

Try Advanced System Care Free for all your pc health needs. Even better if you can buy the pro version.

But I have to go with format here, unless you can get someone to look at your taskmanager/installed files/etc and figure out what is causing it.

What kind of media players/mp3 software do you have installed on your pc, or multimedia software like Winamp, WMP, VLC, Nero, etc? Could be one of them.

Could be some old registry entry from some shady software or something causing the conflict.

[tarheelpride]

Ok. A couple questions

what Operating System are you running?

what Power Management options do you have enabled?

1) Running Windows 7

2) not sure what you mean, unless you're talking about the battery

[Porn Shop Clerk]

Power management options are Windows components that will shut down various aspects of your hardware to conserve power, and may be fuging with your drive.

http://blog.enterpriseitplanet.com/green/blog/2009/01/how-to-manage-windows-7-power-settings.html

[GRWatcher]

I was thinking it could be the driver. i tried disabling and re-abling it but the computer wouldn't let me for some reason. if i can find the driver for it again, i would try to reinstall it

In normal mode Windows won't let you touch the drive because it thinks it's in use. Much like those files someone copies while the file is open.

Boot into safe mode to disable the device. Then restart into normal mode and Windows will find and install your cdrom. Hopefully, this will do it. If not, download a new driver, boot into safe mode and try updating the driver or disabling and then installing again (CP, Add New Hardware), etc.

Searched & found this link to Thinkpad cdrom drivers. You'll have to search for yours in the lists.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/site.workflow:SimpleSiteSearch?&q=cdrom+driver+ThinkPad+General&cc=us〈=en&h=10&ff=24

My problem is that I'm not that familiar with Windows 7 yet. Is there a file checker utility? And I'm assuming that you recently upgraded to Windows 7; it wasn't out a few years ago. If you have the install dvd's there should be a repair option.

I'd try all this before formatting and reloading everything. That's how lazy I am.