How to open and clean CD-ROM

Computer CD-ROM is a sensitive device and it need great care to open and clean it. Normallythey work good even having fair amount of dust on their lens but it can stop working when dust on the lens is more then enough. It can createtwo problems.

- Skipping/ Repeating CDs
- Stop reading
- Taking time in reading CDs

in this case you should make it sure that your CD-ROM need to be cleaned. 

Take following steps to open the CD-ROM:

• Take the CD-ROM out of CPU box
• Open the try of the CD-ROM and remove the front cover of the try.
• When try cover is removed you can removed the other cover on which play and eject button are situated.
• Now open the screw

Almost in the middle of the machine there is a lens you can see it from the bottom of the CD-ROM. There is a small screw which holds the lens you can adjust it to fix the lens. some times this screw is lose and lens cannot perform better. now take tissue paper and very softly clean the lens. Always use blower to clean other parts of CD-ROM. After finishing this job tight the screw and place the cover as it was removed. You will definitely see difference in CD reading

Speed up CD-ROM data transfer

DMA mode

Windows XP sets DMA mode on IDE channels wrong. Most of CD-ROM devices support this, but Windows XP puts them in PIO ( slower ). DMA wont speed device, but it will use less RAM memory, and that way data transfer from CD-ROM to computer will be faster. 
Go to My Computer-Hardware-Device Manager.
Find "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" and click «+» (plus) near it. Double click on «Primary IDE channel». Look at «Advance settings» and look at Device 1 settings. It's probably set up to PIO transfer mode. Set to «DMA if available». 
Back to "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers". Do same for «Secondary IDE channels» now. If it's in PIO mode. 
If this won't help, you can reinstall IDE channels that won't accept DMA mode. And that you can do in following way:
Right click on IDE channel, «uninstall» and OK.
Restart your computer and look if IDE channel excepted DMA mode. 
IN some cases, you can get only MultiWord, but that's better than PIO mode, too.