How Can I...

[StewNTexas]

I have an 'old' Dell that I want to let the grandkids use for learning keyboard skills and for some kid friendly games. But it has lost the ability to recognize the CDRW drive. The only start-up disks I have for it is on CD's.

I go to Device Manager, remove the drive. Also remove any programs associated with the drive. Shut down, restart. It is not found or recognized. Can't use my WindowsXP disk to reformat as the drive is not recognized.

Opened the case, removed the drive. Back though Device Mgr., double checked for any associated programs. Shut down, restart.

Installed the drive again. It found it! For about 5 minutes, just long enough for me to think I had solved the problem. It is now gone again. I do not have any bootable disks for the 3.5 floppy drive, or for the zip drive. I just want to clean and reformat the HD, reinstall Windows.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[Miz]

There was a year or so that Dell sold a lot of systems with defective CD drives. It's possible yours is one of them. If that's the case, the cure is to buy a new CD drive. They're easy enough to install if you have the patience to fiddle with tiny screws and have a phillips screwdriver. They're also cheap. A CD read-only drive can be had for $20 U.S., usually less. A CD writer can be had for not much more than that. I've seen 52X32X52 CD for $40, U.S.