cd rom question

Discussion in 'PC Help Desk' started by Rockyv58, Jan 23, 2014.

  1. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    I am rebuilding a second machine of mine. I had to put back on Vista. I eventually am going to get a copy of windows 7 for it from school. But before I do that I have one unresovled issue. It is a Dell XPS420 and it has a Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-5170S ATA Device [Optical drive]. It is being seen by vista, I can even hear the cd spinning in the drive. but it is not coming back with any information off any cd or dvd, both home made and out of the box cd\dvd. Even if I boot up with a bootable cd it does not give the opting to boot off of it. I suspect maybe the laser portion of it is not working. But before I spend money I don't have to replace the drive I am looking for any suggestions for what I may be missing.

    I have gone and opened it up and reseated both the data and the power cable for the drive.

    thanks
     
  2. appcomm

    appcomm Well-Known Member

    Is the DVD drive set to be the boot drive in the PC setup? Or, on a lot of Dells, pressing F12 at boot will give you a menu to pick the boot device you want to use.
     
  3. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    yes it is set to boot. It is set to boot before the hard drive. Also once up shouldn't it be able to read data off of a cd/dvd?
     
  4. ddrdan

    ddrdan Well-Known Member

    Have you done a complete Vista update since you loaded the O/S? By complete, I mean, it takes manually running the win update over and over till it returns no new updates.
     
  5. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    yes I have. The only things I did not install were optional stuff for BING which I won't install. But it keeps failing on:
    Update for windows vista kb929777
     
  6. CraigSPL

    CraigSPL Well-Known Member

  7. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    okay silly question. I am use to the grey data cable. I have one for the hard drive. But the dvd\cd rom has the thin red cable. Is that called 'firewire"? It is right next to the power cable. And are new dvd\cd burners use that cable now adays?
     
  8. appcomm

    appcomm Well-Known Member

    That data cable as you described it is a SATA cable. Yes, IDE drives have been left behind and most hard drives and CD/DVDs use SATA connectors now.
     
  9. Rockyv58

    Rockyv58 Well-Known Member

    Thanks. I would hate to buy the wrong drive online
     

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