help to open tower drawer

[portertina]

hello i cannot get my tower drawer to open. i tried the little hole with the paperclip. i tried to click on eject. it has a green flashing light and it makes the noise of opening. i have an hp tower(hp cd-writer). can anyone give me suggestions on how to open it. there is no cd in it. thanks to anyone who responds.

[ME_2&]

Hmm, the paperclip poke-around-in-the-hole is kind of tricky, it's much like trying to open a car door lock with a 'slim jim' - you need to know a bit about how the release mechanism works and just how to jiggle it to actuate it. If it makes a noise like it's trying to work when you use the software eject (or the button on the unit itself) chances are the unit may be faulty .. if your machine is still under warranty (and the CD unit is the original), HP should send you a nice new replacement. Or they may have a local service option. Call them and see (if you're still under warranty), most oem mfgs are quite decent about sending replacement units for modules like optical drives.

Sometimes also the drive can be 'locked' by software such as Roxio's direct-to-disc (treating an optical disc as a 'fixed' disk much like a hard drive), if that's the case then the software must be loaded to perform the eject sequence.

Hope this helps & good luck

[portertina]

hello and thanks, but no warranty left. i think its 5 years old and still works great....have a great night.

[ME_2&]

Like keyboards, sometimes optical drives just get tired and one little thing will fail or get stuck (especially moving parts). Luckily aftermarket CD or even DvD burners are not all that pricey and fairly simple to swap out (read the manual or sheet and be quite careful about static if you do it yourself! a grounding wrist-strap is a good investment if you poke around inside the pc tower case and gently clean out the dust and cathair like I do from time to time, lol). One little extra thing you can do while the case is open is to replace the small button battery (if your systray clock tends to be fast/slow and not synced by an online service, chances are this may need replacement) which is usually located somewhere on the motherboard.

Good to hear your sys is otherwise oki & keep `em flying

[honda12]

Well said ME_2&,

Static = BAD

(Reminds me of the time when my older brother got his first computer and I thought it would be a 'cool' idea to clean out the dust using a static-charged balloon! - That was long time ago, but I still think he doesn't trust me )