I have NEVER had this happen before! I was sitting showing a friend Sanitarium and considering just playing it again myself, when disc 1 (after installation) during play, EXPLODED in my CDROM drive! It shattered into tons of tiny pieces! It sounded like a gunshot and the game froze, so I opened the CD drive and all that was there was tons of tiny pieces of disc! Some of them fell into my drive, so now my drive doesn't work!

Sometimes I think that I'm cursed. I have a friend who is good with computers, coming over to have a look at it tonight. Hopefully, it's fixable and the little shards of disc didn't break anything else in the drive.

Go figure! Have you ever even HEARD of such a thing??!!

I've worked in IT for the last 9 years and this is without doubt the bizzarest thing I've ever heard of: an exploding CD......WOW <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/woozy.gif" />

Makes for a great story to tell people though

Life is much much stranger than fiction - I've heard of microwaving CDs but not this!

Quick patent the idea! Your very own Fortean moment.

GG -

Makes me wonder if your computer fans were working at the time you were showing off Sanitarium to your friend. Ask your friend if you think the cause of the problem happened to be the fans. If so, you're gonna need to replace them. The fans are necessary to keep the insides of a computer very cool. As you have witnessed, problems can occur if your fans don't work properly. But, I have never heard of anybody's cd exploding in their drive before. Good luck! Maybe the game was just too hot to show off to your friend.

Hi Girlgeek

Believe it or not you're the second Boomer that has happened to. Can't remember who had the exploding disk before but yep it happens. The disk could have overheated, it could have not been sitting properly in the drive or the disk could have developed small fractures - who knows. Thank goodness no one was hurt lol.

Fractures in the outer end of the cd is the most common reason for this, and I assure you, it's not only you it has happened to. Especially in high speed, even the smallest of fractures can be lethal to your disk. To bad you lost the cd though

I was just going to post what Syd said, I can't recall who it was either - but they had theirs break up and I believe it shot pieces of the disc out from the PC. I do recall that they had to replace their CD Rom. Yikes.

I wonder if there is anyway to tell that the CD is flawed or has breaks that could cause it to do this?

Laura

So sorry things are going so badly for you right now. I hope next year will be a much better one for you.

Yep, maybe this run of bad luck will be replaced with a run of good luck next year (what Nickie said). Just be glad that you or your friend weren't hurt.

Omigosh, Lori! Eeeeeeeeks! What a scary experience 'that' must have been!

I'm glad that at least *you're* ok. The CD 'and' the drive are both replaceable! It could probably have been worse! You never know. <sighhhhhhh>

In any event, the year is almost over and the next one has GOT to be better! You still have all of us to lean on. My heart goes out to you, Be sure to keep us all posted.

Thank heaven you have a job now! Things will work themselves out, I'm sure.

Big hugs,

Yvonne

<img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/pacify.gif" />

It's been said bad things come in three's, maybe now the good things will come.

I'm glad you're all right!

~Dee

Now that's what I call a bug!! I wonder if there's a patch for that. Maybe Elmer's has one.


Sorry to hear it, though. I hope your drive didn't sustain any real damage.

Ohh Lori,

well at least neither of you got hurt.

I did read the comments before, the post was in mixed bag.... some of the faster cd roms are not recommended, especially if you are playing an old, scratched cd.. the 52 speed ones are the usual ones this happens to.

Mac, I had a problem with the fan in my pc.. mind you it was 5 years old.... meant I got a new pc OK so hubby had been meaning to upgrade mine as it was his old one, but he just made a snap decision when we went to get the new fan and cd (nope it didn't go bang, but it smelled AWFUL!!) and I got a great pressie!!

Hugs

Tig

Lori, WOW! I've never heard of such a thing. Now I'll be paranoid every time I put in a disc. I didn't even know such a thing like that was possible.

Please CYE

ANYONE with a CD drive 40x or faster should seriously think about a slowdown utility. I always run my CD drive at the slowest tolerable speed when playing (usually 4x 0r 8x is plenty) and only allow it to spin fast when installing.

Here's a great program. It's from Germany, but the menus are in English.

CD-Brake

I think it was Josie who had the exploding CD problem before; up until then, I had never heard of such a thing.

That's an awful thing to happen girlgeek. I hope you're feeling better now.

I am Here Now Yes it was me and it was also
"Sanatarium" I was just playing along the game froze and heard a noise and pieces flew out around the crack around the CD carriage across the floor and I couldnt get open the CD-Rom had to use a paper clip. My game was a brand new game.

What brand is your Cd-Rom? or company made it.
Mine was made by Pine Technologies.

Josie:)

Never heard of that happening before. The main thing is no one was hurt.
I am not able to play Sanitarium on my computer. For some reason it keeps freezing.
I think after hearing what happened to you I won't try to get it to work now.

Happy Thanksgiving. Be well.
Susan

Josie,

My CDROM is a Gateway. Never had any problems before. Isn't it rather STRANGE that it was Sanitarium for both of us that caused the "explosion?" I would tend to want to say, in that case, that it had something to do with the game itself, not our drives.

I did play Sanitarium once through with no problems, but that has been years ago. I think my computer hardware is all the same except I have a new hard drive.

I do find it curious that Sanitarium is the game that caused the problem BOTH times this unusual thing happened! My game was also purchased brand new a couple of years ago from Amazon, and only played once....not a scratch on it.

Sorry to hear about this problem girl. I played Sanitarium a few months back and had no problem with it BUT so glad I didn't as my CDROM is 52x. I have noticed now and then that a disc feels VERY WARM when I remove it from the drive, but it does not happen often, hope this does not mean an 'explosion' can/will happen to me, just figured the fan was not cooling it fast enough. Glad no one was hurt.
WARNING - do NOT use a vacuum cleaner on, in your computer to clean out the bits from that disc. Static Electricity is deadly to your computer. Use one (or more) of those cans of air to blow it out and hand pick any pieces you can get. Hubby says the only thing you will have to replace is the CD ROM drive...any floppy drives you have are open but cleaning out any bits will keep them from harm or replacement.
Anyone wanting to know what is inside their computer - hardware and any software you installed - use a free download called Belarc which does a survey of your computer and you end up with a list of all your hardware and your current software installed. The program downloads to your hard drive and you can use it offline anytime you wish an update of your stuff. We find it very useful to know the answer to all the usual questions regarding our computers 'insides'.
Love, Betty Lou

Always make backups of your games just incase!! ive had a game shatter in my DVD drive once before and lucky enough i had a copy made up.. so alls well cept for the £40 i had to pay for a new drive

-Polo

GG -

There is one rule you should know about when you're posting here at GB. Never, ever, ever mention the name Gateway in front of our mod Jenny! Trust me!

There is another program which tells you all about your computer in greater detail called Aida32 .
It is free and the best of the best.

Too bad about the disk.

Wow! Glad none was hurt!

Now let's think about this:
Instead of this game which is quite common and easily obtained Alice - An Interactive Museum or something alike would be blown to pieces.

I think then at least here someone would get hurt -> me with a heart-attack...

That is really strange and so odd that it happend while playing the same game, thats almost hard to believe. It does make putting that game into cd drive scary but I wanted to offer my Sanitarium if you want to try and play it after your computer gets fixed. If you want to borrow it please email me.

Karen

Karen,

Thanks for the offer. I already have one on the way to me! You all are such a huge help.

Love and hugs,
Me
Lori
"girlgeek"

Hi girlgeek -
You should consider filing a report with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Be happy you didn't injure your eyes!