Hey.
About a month ago I bought a mediocre PC off a friend, it had an AMD Athlon XP 1700+, 256mb RAM, Onboard Sound, Radeon 9600 Pro, Floppy Drive and CD Drive.
I am now in the process of upgrading, and I have recently bought some more memory to get me to 512mb, and a Sound Card (Sound Blaster Audigy 2 LS).
Just yesturday I was playing BF:Vietnam, and the game returned to the main menu and told me to insert a CD. I tried to open my CD-ROM and it did'nt react, I turned off my computer and checked to see if the IDE cables and Power cables were secure (which they were) and then restarted the machine, to find that the PC detected the CDROM once again.
This happened again today whilst copying some files.

Do you think i need to invest in a new CD-ROM (which will probably become a DVD Rom anyway)?

I have another Query: I'm not sure about the cooling system that sits on top of my CPU, it has a "CoolerMaster" badge or something like that on it, and I am curios as to how high I can upgrade the CPU with that same Fan/Heat Sync or whatever it is.

Thanks All.

Hmmm, strange behaviour alright. It's hard to diagnose, could you test another CDRom drive in it? How about the system's power supply, is it still healthy?
GF

Thanks for the prompt reply.
To the best of my knowledge, my power supply is still healthy, although I am not sure of how to determin this, is there a test out there that i could run on my machine to test my PSU?

I'm not aware of any software that will test your PSU; the easiest way I know is just to use a multimeter on each connection and verify they are what the PSU label says they should be. PSU's are fairly cheap so getting a new one shouldn't set you back much.

In addition to checking tight the connections, you could also look for any corrosion on them. Use a pencil erasure or just reconnect them several times to clean off any corrosion.

Regarding your HSF, it depends on the model, though you should be able to use any CPU that your board can handle. It really only makes a difference when you start to overclock the CPU. As long as you use stock components and don't overclock, I don't expect you to have any problems using the same HSF for all your upgrades.

Well thanks again, but I had some more weird behavior from it tonight, I started up my machine, and the CDROM made some sickly noises, then the drawer opened and the disk span like mad in the tray scratching the hell outta it!!!

After that, my machine didn't detect the CD ROM and it wasnt listed in "my computer"

I rebooted my system and it workes fine again.

Sounds like an issue w/ the drive. If you can, borrow a drive and see if you still have problems. Or just go ahead and buy a new one; DVD drives are getting cheaper or just a standard CD can be had for <$100.

Cheers, Its payday next week, I think i'll splash out.