The company's project was later reportedly shut down by the U.S. A wave of negative publicity ensued, with coverage on BuzzFeed News, CNBC, the BBC, and TechCrunch.

At CES 2018, he broke the news about Kodak's 'KashMiner' Bitcoin mining scheme with a viral tweet. Starting in 2015, Chris attended the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas for five years running. His work has even appeared on the front page of Reddit.Īrticles he's written have been used as a source for everything from books like Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, media theory professor at the City University of New York's Queens College and CNN contributor, to university textbooks and even late-night TV shows like Comedy Central's with Chris Hardwick. His roundups of new features in Windows 10 updates have been called 'the most detailed, useful Windows version previews of anyone on the web' and covered by prominent Windows journalists like Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley on TWiT's Windows Weekly. Instructional tutorials he's written have been linked to by organizations like The New York Times, Wirecutter, Lifehacker, the BBC, CNET, Ars Technica, and John Gruber's Daring Fireball. The news he's broken has been covered by outlets like the BBC, The Verge, Slate, Gizmodo, Engadget, TechCrunch, Digital Trends, ZDNet, The Next Web, and Techmeme. Beyond the column, he wrote about everything from Windows to tech travel tips. He founded PCWorld's 'World Beyond Windows' column, which covered the latest developments in open-source operating systems like Linux and Chrome OS. He also wrote the USA's most-saved article of 2021, according to Pocket.Ĭhris was a PCWorld columnist for two years. Beyond the web, his work has appeared in the print edition of The New York Times (September 9, 2019) and in PCWorld's print magazines, specifically in the August 2013 and July 2013 editions, where his story was on the cover. With over a decade of writing experience in the field of technology, Chris has written for a variety of publications including The New York Times, Reader's Digest, IDG's PCWorld, Digital Trends, and MakeUseOf. Chris has personally written over 2,000 articles that have been read more than one billion times-and that's just here at How-To Geek. If you open the case: It's always worth it to visually inspect any capacitors to see if they're bulging at the top: they could keep the laser from working even if everything else seems to be OK.Chris Hoffman is the former Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. (You should also hear noise as the laser assembly moves back and forth trying to find the beginning of the disc.)Ĭonfirm that the (tiny!) plastic lens is indeed still on the laser assembly: we've seen one optical drive where the lens popped loose and was rattling around in the case: gluing it back fixed the optical drive. If not, it's possible that the ribbon cable to the laser assembly came loose or needs to be reseated. If you try nudging the laser a few times unsuccessfully as in 1) above, notice where you left it last time and see if it moves in its track at all when you try the next time.

(Depending on the design of the optical drive you might be able to use a transparent disc (you get one or two of these when you buy a stack of discs) to see if the laser is indeed lasing.) A burnt-out laser is a hard repair because you have to identify and replace the part. If that doesn't work then the laser might have burnt out. If 1) the laser assembly is moving OK, 2) the motor is spinning freely and 3) you're sure there's no foreign matter in the drive THEN perhaps the laser has stopped working: try removing and reseating the ribbon cable to the laser assembly. If neither of those works:ģ) confirm that there isn't foreign matter like hair wrapped around the motor spindle or a dust bunny in the CD tray slot or mechanism. Our experience at Fixit Clinic is that the vast majority of optical disc drives will spring back to life after step 1) and/or step 2) above. 2) clean the laser lens (with 90% isopropyl alcohol and a q-tip)**

Pc clean disk drive lens