Inspirion 4000 CD

Maybe, brand new CD and I checked it worked in another machine before I purchased it. I'll go and have a play and see what I can find.

If the CD drive isn't recognized, but the hard drive is, replace the CD drive. If neither is recognized by the BIOS (F2) it's more likely the hard drive has failed - replace it before trying to replace the CD (a faulty hard drive will render the optical drive invisible, as they share a controller).

Thanks for the prompt reply, the CD and HD are both fine, but because you can have either floppy drive OR CD unit in it doesn't seem want to read the CD, I'ce set the BIOS to boot from it, the CD works (spins up) but thats as far as we get.. hence I tried to load win 98 drivers from a floppy but as the CD isn't in place it ignorred the oakcdrom driver.

Although the BIOS senses the CD, it sounds like the drive is dead. You can try another CD, to see if it'll read that, but it's more likely the drive needs to be replaced.

No joy, any body got any more ideas?

sorted!