This afternoon I was sitting with my youngest son at the computer while he was playing Reader Rabbit : Thinking Adventures. He was bouncing along through an activity when we heard a popping noise and I felt something hit my leg.
We both sat there for a second trying to figure out what had happened and that is when I saw the front trim piece of the DVD drive hanging from the computer. The piece that hit me in the leg was one of the plastic clips that holds the trim piece in place and as soon as I saw what had hit me, I knew the CD was toast.
After unplugging the machine and a little disassembly, I had the drive out and removed most of the pieces from the explosion. I’ve already ordered a replacement drive from NewEgg.com (thanks for the recommendation Shawn).
Rather than try to explain something I never thought I would see, I’ll let the pictures finish the story:
There you have it – pictures from the aftermath of an exploding CD. As you can see above, I was able to piece most of the CD back together but there are still quite a few pieces inside the drive. Hopefully the new DVD drive will arrive soon and I can have their machine back to normal.
Nothing like a little fun on a Wednesday afternoon!
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I didn’t know reader rabbit was still kicking. I remeber reader rabbit from my amegia days.
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wow 69 posts..must have gone viral
There’s also the case of the microwaved cd
Whoa! How in the world did that happen?? You think it was the drive that caused it or the cd was alrdy damaged which caused it?
How fast was your drive 208X? LOL
It must of been spinning really fast
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o_o I have a lot of Reader Rabbit discs, though that never happened to me. And our computer is dell…
*backs away from computer slowly*
Well I don’t have to worry about it moving too fast-Our computer moves about as slow as an hourglass
Woah! That exact same thing happened to me on my Dell comp. I was playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego Deluxe Edition. Another educational title – somethings going on there?
Hi there Jimmy, thanks for stopping by to share your experience! Maybe there is some sort of bias against the educational games, lol.
I can’t believe that even a cd can explode too. I haven’t experience this kind of explosion and I would let my know about this so that they would be aware too. Nice post. Thanks for sharing your pics and your informative article.
That happened to me today. I’m still not sure if the drive works.
Unbelievable I have never seen a disc exploding before. Is this because you leave the cd in the player for long time? I am absolutely clueless as why is this happening?
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I am looking for current real statistics on this happening.
is this happening in 1/1000? 1/10,000? 1/100,000?
what is causing it? how can we prevent it?
I have been told to discard 100′s of DVDs that have tiny cracks in the center.
Your CD must have been cracked already. There is no way that a healthy CD would have exploded under those circumstances. Mythbuster’s tested the exploding CD myth here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6avp29GqXo
I had a CD explode like that a while ago too.
I have seen the Mythbusters episode, too. There is no way a CD drive can spin fast enough to break a CD. So the CDs either had a stress flaw or, people ar lying to get attention, even on the internet. Sad, but hardly unusual.
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As you can see by the pictures above, we clearly had a CD explode in the drive. Now, it is certainly possible that the CD had a crack or flaw in it but it went unnoticed by anyone that was loading the CD into the drive.
That’s happened to me before too; I was installing a game called “silver” (not educational, it’s a pc based rpg) on my younger sister’s computer and the disc shattered in the drive, I had to take it apart to get all the pieces out.
wow. how uninteresting. STUMBLE FAIL. really not an interesting page.
Thanks for sharing your opinion.
I have faced same problem in my office. I shocked. Thank you for sharing your opinion.
I resurrected an old Gateway 310 (added 2 GB of memory) and am just now remembering its peculiarities.
The DVD ROM just goes wild reading some CDs–it sounds like a vacuum cleaner. But the same CD plays fine in the CD/RW drive, and DVDs play fine in the DVD drive.
I think that some DVD drives have a glitch (I’m not enough of an expert to say if it is in the DVD-ROM BIOS or the driver) whereby they attempt to read CDs uncontrollably fast.
To me it has happened too
That happened to me on my old Dell! Guess the CDs are just spinning way too fast.
Self combusting CD’s! Really like the way you’ve modified the thesis theme on your site.
My Windows7 DVD has just exploded in the drive too, never seen anything like it !!
Same thing happened to me once!
Just bought my first copy of COD MW and it sort of exploded!
Luckily it didn’t damage the rest of my computer..
So I know how yoy feel Derek
I just got a Dell and I was playing Duke Nukem 3D and the CD just Explode and man it scared, The computer is still working.
I never had this happen.
I didn’t know that this can happen, hope that this will never happen to me…
well, it just happen to me. i was in the process of burning cd, and then its explode. i turn off the computer, open the cd-drive, the cd shattered into pieces. i think, some pieces still inside ><. its not my computer anyway..
good thing none of those flying pieces hurt you!
I think that some DVD drives have a glitch (I’m not enough of an expert to say if it is in the DVD-ROM BIOS or the driver) whereby they attempt to read CDs uncontrollably fast.
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