Cd's and fans and cables, Oh MY!

[Ziz]

Hey all, assorted questions... Answers/suggestions on any of these is appreciated.

1) My Creative 24x CD drive occasionally has problems running certain CD's. Most recent is the March Computer Gaming World disc; it's like the drive is trying to get up to speed but something keeps slowing it down. I've also had problems recently with the drive not recogizing that a disc has been put in the drive. Open and close the drawer a few times and eventually it works. Could the drive just need a lens cleaner disc run through it?

2) I have 2 case mounted fans (one front, one rear) that are powered via pass-thru style power connectors. I saw the same fans at computer shows recently with the 3-wire motherboard style connectors on them. Aside from the temperature monitoring features of the MB BIOS (Asus P2B), is there any advantage to getting the 3-wire versions of the fans?

3) I have an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro AGP and an SB Live Value. The AIWP has an MPC2 (white) audio out connector on it to allow for CD audio pass-thru on older sound cards. I picked up an MPC2-to-MPC3 (black connector) cable at a show, but the cable only has 3 wires, not 4. Will it work properly or will I be missing my left (or right) audio channel when using the card's A/V functions?

[Yupee]

1)Maybe cleaning the lens is the answer. Also it happenes that some CDROMs cannot be red by the player because of missalignment between recorder and player laser spots.
2)it is used to read the fan speed, not temperature. Don't bother with that, anyway...
3)3 wires are enough: 1 for ground and 2 for the two channels.

[Harold]

Hi there,
1e I've got a college who cleaned the lens fromm his cd-rom.....Now it doesn't work anymore. So be carefull, and don't do anything you're not sure of.
2e It's true that some readers and cd-roms won't work together like we would (think we must learn to live with it)
Wish you good luck and I hope you've got something about my reply.

Harold