rant Bl**dy CD bl**dy ROM bl**dy drives FFS!

WFT is it with CD ROM drives? Or maybe me and CD ROM drives? Am I unlucky or are they the flakiest piece of PC technology on the planet? I've replaced my PC's CD ROM drive more times than anything else in the box.

Last night my router went up the swanny so I tried to reinstall its firmware but my drive absolutely refused to recognise the disc. Tried another disc - fine. Went back to the disc I needed - no joy. Aha! you all cry - its just a dodgy disc. Well, its only been used once and stored ever since in a nice safe place. I tried wiping it on my sleeve, shirt, the carpet and kitchen towel. Then I washed it under the tap, dried it and tried again. No luck. So obviously a knackered disc.

...then I take it into work and put it in my PC there and it reads it first go. What the hell???

I'm absolutely fed up with bundled CD ROMs. I recently installed a webcam on my girlfriend's dad's laptop and the firmware CD supplied with that simply did not work either - and that was after I had to edit the bloody registry to get the laptop to actually recognise it had a CD ROM drive installed at all!.

And on the odd occaison the things do work, the firmware is so out of date you have to download the latest drivers from the web anyway! Grrrrrr....

Yup, I don't even bother looking at the CDs any more.... they usually get binned..

I've never had that sort of problem, you're not washing the drives under the tap too are you?

And on the odd occaison the things do work, the firmware is so out of date you have to download the latest drivers from the web anyway! Grrrrrr....

So you already know the solution

Last laptop I bought was an ultra-portable, so no CD drive in the first place. Haven't missed it one bit.