Flash Tool

orionorg,

Thank you for visiting the Dell Community Forum.

With the limited information provided, it is difficult to provide a very specific answer. I would guess that the “Flash Tool” that you are referring to is a program used to write (or “flash”) the firmware on an optical drive, but the generic term flash tool also applies to the many flash tool programs for working with flash programs like Macromedia Flash – among other things.

Generally if you are dealing with a Dell installed optical drive, a third-party flash tool program is not needed; if there is a Dell supplied firmware update available it will generally install itself with just the files that you download. Please be advised that using a third-party flash tool or any other method of writing a non-Dell firmware to your drive will void the warranty on the drive and my have unpredictable results.

If you can provide information on what optical drive you have, someone can probably help you check if there is an available firmware update for your drive.