Hi Fenster, The clicking sound is not a good sign but for now consider clearing up any possible driver issue. Click on the CD/RW gif in my post and scroll to Section 15, article 1 and Section 11, article 2. Too you may have dust on the lens, I read a post from Jack and I also never cared much for the disc with the little brushes, A can of compressed air, short, controlled puffs. Something else as well that may breath life into a dieing drive or at least it has for a few Members, use the "Downloads" tab above, enter information for your system and follow the links, Dell has a firmware release for this unit, give it a try if not a driver issue.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the difference.
Hey Predator.
I went to Section 15, Article 1 and removed the device exactly how it told me to, but when I rebooted, I received no message to reinstall the device. I then went to the Device Manager and found that the drive was still on there, even though I had removed it.
I didn't understand what Section 11, Article 2 was about, so I didn't try anything there.
I put a Sentry disk cleaner into the CD-R drive, but again, it said the drive was empty so I couldn't use it. I then found a bottle of compresseed air and cleaned it out. No improvements.
As for the Downloads tab you mentioned, I'm not exactly sure what to download.
I did the thing in Article 11, Section 2, and it didn't work.
As for the firmware, again it says I have to save it to a floppy disk, and the floppy drive doesn't seem to be working. Actually I don't know if its the drive or the disks I'm putting in.
Hi Fenster, When you re-booted, Windows redetected the drive and installed the proper driver, done automatically, however this did not correct the problem. In a nutshell, the Dell article in Section 11 clears the log and forces the system to redetect your installed devices. Under the "Downloads" tab, you should look for a possible firmware update for your model, CD-RW drive. We have seen a firmwire help a drive with similar problems, but unfortunately not always, it is worth trying.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the difference.
Ok I figured out what to download, and I downloaded it to my desktop. When I opened the file it said I needed to copy the data to a floppy disk. I put one into my floppy disk drive and clicked Continue on the setup program, but it gave me an error, saying that I needed a writable floppy disk even though I already have one in there.
Hi Fenster, Dell-Cody always recommended using a new Floppy disc or one that has been freshly formatted with no bad sectors. See if this is the problem.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the difference.
Actually I did get it to work, and got the file saved on the floppy, but when I run the program, it sets that it cannot detect the NEC device.
On a weird side note, somehow 4 gigs of hard drive space were suddenly freed, and I haven't deleted anything.
The PC is still under warranty- should I just get a new drive?
Also, I recently added 256 megs of ram, bringing it up to 768. I didn't update the BIOS. Could this be the problem?
Message Edited by fenster301 on 01-10-2004 02:51 PM
Update: thinking that antivirus software may have something to do with it, I enabled autoprotect (usually I have it disabled) and the CD burner works- sort of.
While it's preparing to burn the CD, I got this error message:
An underrun error occurred. This means the computer could not keep up with the CD burner's demand for data. Try the burner again at a slower speed. CD Creation has been aborted!
How exactly do I slow down my "burn speed?"
EDIT
Never mind, the drive won't read CDs again.
Message Edited by fenster301 on 01-14-2004 01:35 PM
Predator
2 Intern
•
15.3K Posts
0
January 6th, 2004 02:00
Hi Fenster,
The clicking sound is not a good sign but for now consider clearing up any possible driver issue. Click on the CD/RW gif in my post and scroll to Section 15, article 1 and Section 11, article 2.
Too you may have dust on the lens, I read a post from Jack and I also never cared much for the disc with the little brushes, A can of compressed air, short, controlled puffs.
Something else as well that may breath life into a dieing drive or at least it has for a few Members, use the "Downloads" tab above, enter information for your system and follow the links, Dell has a firmware release for this unit, give it a try if not a driver issue.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 6th, 2004 18:00
I went to Section 15, Article 1 and removed the device exactly how it told me to, but when I rebooted, I received no message to reinstall the device. I then went to the Device Manager and found that the drive was still on there, even though I had removed it.
I didn't understand what Section 11, Article 2 was about, so I didn't try anything there.
I put a Sentry disk cleaner into the CD-R drive, but again, it said the drive was empty so I couldn't use it. I then found a bottle of compresseed air and cleaned it out. No improvements.
As for the Downloads tab you mentioned, I'm not exactly sure what to download.
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 6th, 2004 18:00
As for the firmware, again it says I have to save it to a floppy disk, and the floppy drive doesn't seem to be working. Actually I don't know if its the drive or the disks I'm putting in.
Predator
2 Intern
•
15.3K Posts
0
January 6th, 2004 18:00
Hi Fenster,
When you re-booted, Windows redetected the drive and installed the proper driver, done automatically, however this did not correct the problem. In a nutshell, the Dell article in Section 11 clears the log and forces the system to redetect your installed devices. Under the "Downloads" tab, you should look for a possible firmware update for your model, CD-RW drive. We have seen a firmwire help a drive with similar problems, but unfortunately not always, it is worth trying.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 6th, 2004 18:00
Predator
2 Intern
•
15.3K Posts
0
January 6th, 2004 19:00
Hi Fenster,
Dell-Cody always recommended using a new Floppy disc or one that has been freshly formatted with no bad sectors. See if this is the problem.
Best Regards
God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 7th, 2004 16:00
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 8th, 2004 23:00
On a weird side note, somehow 4 gigs of hard drive space were suddenly freed, and I haven't deleted anything.
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 10th, 2004 14:00
Also, I recently added 256 megs of ram, bringing it up to 768. I didn't update the BIOS. Could this be the problem?
Message Edited by fenster301 on 01-10-2004 02:51 PM
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 13th, 2004 18:00
fenster301
15 Posts
0
January 14th, 2004 17:00
While it's preparing to burn the CD, I got this error message:
An underrun error occurred. This means the computer could not keep up with the CD burner's demand for data. Try the burner again at a slower speed. CD Creation has been aborted!
How exactly do I slow down my "burn speed?"
EDIT
Never mind, the drive won't read CDs again.
Message Edited by fenster301 on 01-14-2004 01:35 PM