Dell 24x CD-ROM Drivers Needed

You should not need ANY drivers for a CD-ROM drive unless you are using pure DOS, or Windows 3.11

The driver duties for the CD are handled by either Windows, or the driver for the chip-set on the PC.

If you do need DOS mode drivers, try CD-ROM God.
I believe there is a link for it at www.bootdisk.com

Chas

I agree, it looks like the drive is a different drive than originally shipped with the C600.

2 possibilities:

The BIOS may not be able to work with the newer drive.

Try installing Intel's reference drivers for the chip-set.

Another alternative, would be to connect to the internet from the C600, and allow Dell to check the configuration, and provide the correct drivers.
Might be worth the time.

Chas

Does the floppy drive work in the drive bay? If you are trying to hook it up with the parallel cable it will not work, the cable only supports the floppy drive. Depending on the OS that you are running you may or may not need drivers. XP supports the removable drives with no extra software, 9x has a bay manager that you use to swap the drives. If you turn the laptop off and insert the CDRom (make sure it clicks firmly into place, they do tend to not click all the way in) it should recognize it fine. I would try the boot menu and boot to the CDRom with the blue diagnostics disk in the drive to see if the system is recognizing it. If it will not boot to the CD then you have a bad drive or drive bay connection.

Use the following site,it may have the drivers that you are seeking
http://store.yahoo.com/laptopsforless/unexcdromdri2.html

I have had hundreds of inspiron and latitudes come across my bench and none of them use anything but the microsoft atapi driver for win 98 and above.
The CD-Rom Will work using the little Floppy Cable. Dell does not recomend this but I have never had any significant problems using it with the CD.
--Are you using this computer on the network where a mapped drive could be walking on the Drive letter assigned to the CDROM?
--in XP with the drive installed and a disk in the drive.
1) Check-->MyComputer,properties-->hardware--> devicemanager-->CD/DVD-->your drivename--> properties.
Any conflicting devices?
Is the device disabled?
2) Check-->Administrative tools--> Computer management-->storage-->disk management
Is the drive listed?
Is the drive letter what you expected?

**Just as an afterthought try booting with a windows 98 boot disk and see if you can access a CD under dos this will tell you if you are looking at a hardware or software problem.

A little more info would help. What OS, is this a clean install? Has this worked in the past?

This unit is sold with many Dell Laptops. There's plenty of questions and answers about this drive and same issue on Dells forum. Dell reps say pretty much the same as mentioned here.

The thing should boot with a bootable CD.

Should be able to use allmost any 4X ATAPI CD.

Win98 boot disk with CD support should work.

On some of the Dell systems there is a driver for the Bay Manager. It allows for hot swapping devices. There's a icon that's by the time simular to a PCMIA card device. Once selected you can choose to remove or insert the different drives.

If I remember correctly the drive doesn't work on the floppy cable so that's not related.

Here is a link to Dell's forum about this drive and part number.

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/search?q=5044D+AO2&x=11&y=7

Put the floppy on the external cable and the cd in the unit.

Now boot to a win98 startup disk. The cd drivers on that disk should see the drive and enable it. Good old mscdex.exe.

This would be on the lowest level (dos) and should tell you if it hardware or software.

If dos enabled drivers don't find it you have a problem.

Oh by the way. You don't run a cd on the external cable because when the head is in fast access the spike currents, and resulting rf, that are created when the head positioner changes position, can the parallel ports capacity

Lee

This question was closed by the author