Screeching CD-ROM drive

Pathetic... really pathetic. Gets on my nerves whenever I try to use it. My CD-ROM drive is really a pain in the butt. It pissed me off at the last 10 mins of watching 'The Land Before Time' VCD lent to me by Rebecca. With just so few mins left of the show, my CD-ROM drive began to screech & pause at the same time, almost every 3 seconds! Of course, its not the first time that this happened, but that's the point see... often enough until it justs irritates me. This stupid thing can just hang there, while the seconds roll-on. I mean, what the heck? Come on... hanging every 3 seconds is really agravating madness, especially towards the end of a show.

Actually, I had in mind to purchase a new PC desktop once I start my perm job, hopefully before the end of this month. I was thinking of getting it through Dell, since they allow me to pay by installments of about $120 - $180 per month. Not too bad, I thought... though I must check to see how much more do I need to pay by this mode of payment. Oh well... wait & see first...

This custom-built PC of mine (kindly constructed by Elgin Lam from my ex-Clayworks CG) have already lasted 5 years. From the ever-shortening 6 months life-cycle of new IT advancement, my PC have already lived through 10 life-cycles! In fact, it has already started to get cranky last year. Through the re-formating of the Windows platform & software (I can't do much about the hardware), I have already prolonged its survival for another 1 year. Now the hardware components are beginning to fall apart.

(1) Mouse can't move properly, (2) Only 1 speaker can produce sound, (3) Sub-woofer not working, (4) CD-ROM drive sometimes can't even read CD-R (much less watch a VCD), (5) 56K dial-up modem automatically does register on my PC every once in awhile, (6) CD-RW drive working at a very low writing speed, (7) USB ports on the motherboard occasionally loose & can't register external hardware, e.g. digital camera cable.

I really don't want to think about it anymore. I'll just try to revive it for as long as possible...