PC Optical Drive not reading games

[Cloud121]

I've been trying to play a few of my older PC games lately (Max Payne 2, Deus Ex, Diablo), and the games will not boot, even though the game is in the optical drive. Hell, there are times when I want to install a game, it will take almost five to ten minutes for the damn installation to come up, due to it reading the disc so slow.

Perhaps I'm being hasty, but I want to say SecuROM is to blame? I remember reading awhile ago apparently SecuROM can cause hardware issues with optical drives. I actually do have a few SecuROM games installed on my computer (Crysis, Crysis 2, Mass Effect), but I didn't realize this until after I had them installed. They were the digital versions off Origin, so I assumed that they wouldn't have SecuROM at all, but turns out they do. This whole thing started after I had those games installed, as they all ran perfectly previously.


Maybe it's something else, and I'm probably making a quick judgement, but what do you guys think?

[APE992]

The drive is probably dying. Does it read DVD movies any better?

[Cloud121]

DVD movies play fine. DVD games play fine as well. It's my compact disc games that are giving me issues.

[APE992]

Possible you have something like that godawful DRM installed that messed with the drivers?

Given DVD movies are fine it probably isn't a laser issue.

[Anderson]

There's creat some reaosn to not reading your CD and that is may be your CD rom's lenz problem and do not read your disc you should purchase a lens cleaner disc and clean up your CD Rom's lenz or you have also some problem in your disc. computer support

[wiggyx]

^^^ dude, no need to keep bumping old threads.

[Gameguy]

Not sure if this has already been taken care of but the problem could have been caused by a bad diode in the laser. With DVD drives there's more than one diode, one to read CD-ROMs and one to read DVDs. If the drive can read one type of disc well but has problems reading another type, it's probably a problem with one of the diodes. At least that's what I've read that explains why PS2 drives sometimes have problems playing certain types of games but have no problems reading other types. I have a slim PS2 that reads PS1 games fine but can't play PS2 games anymore.