Lost CD/DVD drives

**Haraking** · January 19th, 2006, 07:28 PM

On my Dell 4700 the CD and DVD drives disappeared, returned a few days later, then disappeared never to be seen again. The platters operate. Diagnostics indicate a mother board problem. A new ribbon cable did not correct the problem. Is this a common Dell problem? Any ideas?

**Tecumseh** · January 19th, 2006, 08:50 PM

Originally Posted by Haraking

On my Dell 4700 the CD and DVD drives disappeared, returned a few days later, then disappeared never to be seen again. The platters operate. Diagnostics indicate a mother board problem. A new ribbon cable did not correct the problem. Is this a common Dell problem? Any ideas?

Have you looked for firmware updates?

**Emerald-64** · January 20th, 2006, 06:10 AM

I had a similar problem with one of my older PCs where the cd drive disappeared, i updated the driver and it still wasn't there.

I eventually found my way into the BIOS settings on the computer and found that the IDE chanel of the CD Drive had been disabled for some reason. Enabled it and restarted the PC and the CD Drive was back

The driver i am using now is newer and since it was installed the problem has not cropped up. Touch Wood

**emr** · January 20th, 2006, 07:31 AM

Is there a bios update from Dell for your model? Also check the settings in bios as Emerald-64 suggested.

emr

**Haraking** · January 23rd, 2006, 05:01 PM

Thanks all. Yes, tried all of those items, but did not fix. Tried new ribbon cable but to no avail. It appears to be a mother board problem, maybe the decoder. Am told Dell had problems like that. The CD drive is there in the diagnostic mode, but the CD and DVD drive will not show in MY COMPUTER. I think a new computer may fix the problem.