He he, move it if you want because I can't post it in the news section :blink:

From Fred Langa :

I would like to tell you of 2 incidents where this happened to
me. I was installing new CD-ROMs into 2 different customers
machines when both exploded with the first use after
installation. What I felt was unusual was that they were 2
different brands (both rated at 52x ) using brand new
UNLABELED CDs that had just had been thru a CD-RW to burn
data. When they exploded it damn near made me change my pants
cause it sounded like a shotgun blast! Fortunately they didn't
eject the bits of plastic at great velocity but it sure was
embarrassing! The good news was when the local distributor
replaced both drives straight away (mind you after falling
around on the floor laughing!!) with no questions.

I too had a CD disintegrate while using it. It was a MS Office
set-up disk in a 52X Delta CD. The pieces didn't come out of
the unit but it blew the tray door open and knocked the tray
out of its track. I was able to salvage the unit. I spoke to
MS and they told me it happens sometimes. They sent me a new
office set but I had to pay $25.00 for it. Keep up the
excellent work. V/R Del Paxton

Hi Fred, Oh yes! That happened to us a few years back. I had
bought a Pentium III 450 just for the kids games. Brand new.
The PC was just a few months old. Had a 48X CD Rom. Samsung, I
think. [My daughter] Kristen was playing the game, and I was
in the same room on the other side doing something, when all
of a sudden there was a sound of a loud exploding pop. Kind of
like fireworks. Large ones. And Fred, there wasn't any
indication of this going to happen. Everything sounded normal.
There wasn't any excessive noise coming from that drive. And
the game had only been running for about 10 minutes. Anyway,
Kristen screamed and went sideways off the chair away from the
PC. I realized it was the computer, so I ran across the room
and turned the surge strip off and then pulled the power plug
out of the wall, grabbed Kristen and got out of the room. I
waited a little bit to make sure nothing else was going to
explode, and went back in. Sure enough, that explosion blew
the whole face plate off the CD drive itself, and the CD
drawer was stuck out about 2 inches. And there it was. All the
pieces of sharp bits of the CD laying around. As I got to
looking around the room, a lot of the pieces had shot across
quite some distance. I gathered all of them up and put them in
a plastic bag. The PC was sitting just to the right of the
monitor on top of a desk. Thank goodness it didn't shoot any
pieces into Kristens face. They were very sharp, with some
larger, knife-like pieces.... I disconnected all the cables to
the PC and took the side of the case off and removed the whole
CD Rom drive. I managed to get the drawer open further. There
were a few small pieces and a lot of sharp slivers.... I took
the plastic bag full of the remains of the CD and my receipt
and the box for the software, back to Target. Showed the girl
the bag with the pieces and told her what had happened....
They didn't have a problem at all giving me my money back.

Wow. Sounds scary. I've never had that happen to me, but it sounds DANGEROUS!

That actually happened to a student at my school a few months back.

I think the drive was pretty much finished after that.

I've never heard of this before now either, but couldn't it be the drive or the CD or is it always the CD's fault?

i've seen this happen about 4 times at school now too.. i had to take an entire machine apart, motherboard out of the case and all, to get pieces out of one of them

Yup, I've seen (actualy heard) it happen too. And what a mess it brings ya. Beside the normal big pieces hundreds of tiny fragments. And somehow the drive wasn't working anymore :blink:

Sure hope this isn't some new kind of copy protection :D

Kinda gives a new meaning to Mission Impossible's "This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds...", but then that was 35 years ago; now Jim gets a CD-R with the M.I. folder!

Also the way it's written, it seems like a hoax; I've never seen or heard of anything like that happening in 14 years of supporting PCs, but then maybe I've been lucky.

it's not ;), i have four dell gx260 (i think 260 at least.... too damned many model numbers there to remember which is which) machines still waiting on replacement cdr drives to come in to prove it at school / work :D

It's no hoax, believe me :P Have picked fragments of CD's and lables out of a few "High Speed" cd roms before now. Unfortunatly when it happens the drive is nearly always defunkt and needs replacing, which is OK if you are setting the price for the replacement but bad if you are paying :)