Help please! My computer is Evil!

[Sketch]

I am terrably sorry to bother everyone but i need some help and dont know what to do .

First off i know hardly anything about computers >_<.

Ok heres the deal my bother accidently bent the little metal part on a floppy and when we stuck it in the drive(we didnt know it was bent at the time) .. it got stuck.. so mom pulled it out with a pair of tweesers. ..>_< the little metal part came off..so mom pulled the metal part out with the tweesers..and broke something..>_< now the drive even if it has a floppy in it ether says that there isnt a disk in or that its not formited right and we should formit it to drive A.

and for no apparent reason my CD Drive wont work... at all.
I have no idea whats going on with it or how to fix it.
the thing is my brothers need this computer to do their school work on and they have no way to get their stuff they need on disks and so forth.
I have let them use my personal computer in the mean time untill this one gets fixed. but my computer doent have all the programs they need.

If anyone knows how to fix this i would greatly appreciate any advice.

again i am sorry to bother anyone if i did and thank you so much for taking the time to read this! ^_^+3

[Shurikane]

Number one, your floppy drive is definitely out of comission. You'll have to fetch a new one.

I have a feeling that thanks to the tweezers, something shorted out and the CD drive was affected. Open the case, and check to see if the power cable is firmly plugged into the CD drive, along with the big data cable. If those checks are done and the CD drive still refuses to work, plug it into another computer to see if it's the drive's fault or the computer's fault.

If your bro has trouble with not having the same software as the school does, there's one way he can transfer stuff without a disk: have him E-Mail files to himself. Simple, quick, and very clever.

[Daijaga]

The cords Shuri are refering two are probably:

1) One plug of several (2-5) non connected multi colored wires

2) A single flat mostly gray wire (looks like 20ish smaller wires melted together) tha ends in a black peice that plugs into the back of the CD drive.

Checking to make sure everythign is plugged in isnt hard, so you wont have a big prolem with it. I hypothesies that when your mother pulled on the metal peice, it caught on something it shouldnt have, and pulled a wire loose back there. Dotn just see if its plugged it, compeltely UNPLUG it and replug it is, making sure you apply equal pressure to as much of the plug as possible.

And A drives are cheap, no worries there mate.

[Shino]

Good advise.

Sketch, if you are having problems or if you need help installing new parts let me know. I can help you the next time I'm up in your area. IM me and we'll chat.

[Sketch]

well .. the CD drive was messed long up before the A drive died
It just stoped working..its not even regestering in my
control panal..box thingy. I'll try checking the plugends and relug it see if that works..
so we were just using the floppy drive untill we could figure out how to fix the CD drive... i had pretty much figured i'd have to buy a new A drive...but do what type to i get? is there a certin one or will anyone fit?

thankyou! thankyou! thankyou! very much for the help! *bows*

[Shurikane]

Any floppy drive and any CD drive basically works, hardware-wise since they are all the same size. CD-wise though, it depends on what you need. If you want to burn CDs, get a CD-RW drive. If you want to watch DVDs, get a DVD drive. If you wanna do both, get a CD-RW/DVD combo. And if you want to burn DVDs, then get yourself the top of the line: a DVD+RW/-RW drive.

[Sketch]

OK i tried the plugend thing and its still not working.. any other ideas on what it could be?
and no shino it didnt blow up ;P
I'm really sorry if i'm bothing you guys .. please tell me and i'll stop whining about it .

[Shurikane]

If it's still not working, then the drive is officially fried. You'll have to fetch a new one.

[Musashi]

It may not necessarily be a hardware issue. Well of course the floppy drive will have to be replaced (~$10 or so). However, as far as the CD-ROM is concerned, its possible that its just some windows driver related issue and windows is refusing to recognize that the device is attached. That happened with my old computer. Windows wouldn't recognize my cd-rom but booting up from a linux install disk ran fine. At any rate, Windows is far more likely to fail than your hardware is. Right Shino ^^;;

[Shino]

quite possibly.

Right floppies are cheap and easy to install.
CD Roms are just as easy but not quite as cheap.

As I said... then next time I'm up that way, I can look at it.