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!
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?