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Hand-Me-Down Laptop Woes
Owenashi
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Sorry to bother you all but recently my sister handed me her old Dell Latitude C640 for my own personal use. Now I love her but her and computers don't jell well. She managed to crash the HD and had to reinstall the drivers. When she handed it over, it had no anti-virus or SP2. I've managed to pull it back up to speed for the most part due to a lot of DLs but now I got another problem. The Mashita CD-RW/DVD removable drive she has attatched to it isn't working properlly. The computer knows it's there but when I put a disk in, it doesn't notice it at all. Since this is my first laptop, I don't want to make a mistake by doing something that only works on a desktop. If anyone more knowledgeable in this area could help me out, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
Owenashi on
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Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Also, for figuring out what RAM you need, crucial.com's system selector thing is excellent. You don't need to buy from them, just write down what it spits out as compatible and take it to the shop with you.
With the disk drive: it doesn't start humming or anything when you put the disk in? It just sits there?
Ryan M Long Photography
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It SOUNDS like it runs when I first put it in, complete with the little drive light flashing and everything. But when I check the drive via My Computer or a program like Windows Media Player (telling the Open menu to show me all files), it's like there's no disk there.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
You can get a internal DVD burner off Ebay for about $70 and a new battery for about $62.
Jiggle the handle?
Ryan M Long Photography
Buy my Prints!
CDROM drives are not partitioned. You either think he was talking about his HARD drive or you don't know what your talking about (in this area of knowledge anyways). Not trying to be rude, but your pointing Owenashi in the wrong direction.
If your curious what partitioning actually is : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning
To help Owenashi out, the CDROM obviously is still getting power from your system, hence the LED lighting up and the drive doing a spin up to check for a disc, but it may not be fully functional. CDROM drives don't need drivers in particular with Win XP. The OS has generic drivers that work with 99% of the drives out on the market. You replaced the hard drive, but perhaps you have a bad install of windows, try reformatting, this will rule out a software glitch.Chances are if the CDROM does the same thing, the drive is simply bad.
Replacement Parts:
Dell machines from the last 6 years tend to have very poor quality parts and are very picky with what hardware upgrades will work with them. The CDROM drive you can order from Dell directly, but will not find it in a general electronics retailer (however you can have them order you one as well), check online for a Dell spare parts retailer, they do exist.
Ram is also something that is a problem for dells, alot of brands simply dont work with Dell's. Word on the tech shop street is that Kingston brand works well with them. It tends to very between model series though. Microcenter carries Kingsten, I am not sure if BestBuy does or not. Once again you can find the same stuff for sale online or from Dell.
Bottom Line: Sounds like you get hand-me-downs often. Before you start replacing parts left and right on them make sure you aren't over investing in a machine that is outdated versus simply selling it for cash as-is and getting a new one. On future purchases I would not recommend a Dell machine until they switch to better manufacturers for their parts. A little extra money initially will save you money later on down the road. I don't personally have a TOP manufacturer I recommend, but I DON'T recommend : Dell, Avaratec , or Acer*
* Acer's tend to be nice machine but any problems with them under Acer's warranty takes forever to get fixed they have very poor quality customer service.
If you can't fix the machine and decide to take it in for repair at a tech shop, don't expect 24hr turn around and make sure to backup all your data before you take your machine in. Once again way in the cost (adding in labor here with parts) of fixing the machine versus buying a new one.
This CD-ROM drive - is it placed on the side of the laptop or the front?
Reason I'm asking is this: I have a slew of Cxxx parts - CD-ROM drives, CD-RW drives, a few batteries, etc.
Here's some more useful advice then:
The CD-ROM contains a bios that will cause it to spin up and get ready for operation even if it can't communicate with the rest of the system. I don't suppose you have access to another machine to test the drive with do you? There are two likely scenarios for the drive not working: either the drive is bad or the some part of the interface with the rest of the computer is bad. Hopefully it's the former because that's much easier to fix.