Simple CD Rom Drive Question

[miki]

Hi. My friend's cd rom drive sometimes will not read. can anyone suggest on how to troubleshoot this? and also I have an LG GSA 4040B which i updated to the latest firmware A300. but it seems to be still writing at lower than 4x. i am using B's clip to copy dvds. how can i know my writing speed?.. my friend's cd drive is a samsung, but i dont know the model number.
Thanks for any help you can give.

[Dubber]

Sounds as the CD ROM has dusty lens. Open the drive and use compressed air, don't spray the lens thou. Q tips may do too, be extra careful.

[vitualis]

With CD burners being so cheap nowadays, there's no real problem in trying something risky to see if it saves the drive (e.g., opening it up and giving it a clean).

The worse you will do is to stuff it up completely and have to get a new drive (which is probably the best pragmatic solution in any case).

Regards.

[miki]

Thanks Guys. Dubber & Vitualis. I will tell my friend to clean his drive. hope that will solve his problem.
now, about my drive, anybody here can give me suggestions as to how to know if my dvdwriter is wrting at 4x? any software i can use to know the speed? Im backing up my dvds in B's recorder which came bundled with my dvd writer (LG GSA 4040B) but everytime i click start to burn the dvd at 4x, a message appears. it says that due to the drive restriction or capability(or somethng like that),it cant write to the selected speed, so B's will adjust it to a more suitable speed.
any idea? I had the latest firmware (A300) from LG website(korea). Any help is greatly appreciated.