OK, not quite an exploding CD, but it sure made me jump.

I was installing Windows on another system for an acquaintance earlier this evening. The CD had been spinning for sbout 5 minutes while Windows did its thing, and all of a suddent there was a loud bang. Really loud. Especially as I was leaning over the machine at that moment, inspecting which slots to use for some cards later on.

At first I thought it was something in the power supply, and I made a dash for the power cord, half expecting to see a plume of smoke rising out of the PSU slots any second.

Nope. Eventually I discovered that the CD drawer wouldn't open, although there were some ominous crunching noises as it tried. The movement as I pulled the drive out of the machine resulted in something that sounded like a percussion instrument.

The CD had actually shattered into many tiny pieces. When I took the covers off the drive, there were a couple of larger chunks left, but the rest was just shards of plastic and foil! [Linked Image]

By the way, it took nearly an hour to clean out the drive. You wouldn't believe how hard the specks of foil from a CD cling to the inside of the drive! Fortunately, no damage seems to have been done to the drive and it's now working fine.

Anybody ever had this happen before?