Technical Help?

[mamculuna]

I just broke down and bought myself a nice new laptop, hoping to be able to stay connected better on my wanderings. And right away I can't get it to read the CD of files I'd like to move from my desktop (made them using Roxio). I've been waiting for a Dell tech support chat operator for half an hour, and no one's answering, so I'm beginning to despair.

Does anybody have a guess as to whether this can be fixed by downloading some kind of driver, or is it likely to be bad hardware? It's an Inspiron 600.

Comments

[knullabulla.livejournal.com]

Right click on My Computer and under the hardware tab, click on device manager. Do you have something for CD/DVD-rom showing up? If it doesn't show up there, it's most likely hardware. Otherwise...

Are you having problems with all of your CDs? i.e., the ones that you haven't burned? Try seeing if your CD drive is able to read something like a music CD. If it can read non-burned CDs, than perhaps there's a problem with either the burnable CDs (if the drive is super fussy, it may like some brands of CDs but not others. We had this trouble with our old DVD player.) or the program you're using for encryption.

Nothing wrong with making sure your drivers are up-to-date. Dell should have drivers for you to download on their website.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just figured out that old trick: rebooting. Duh, double-duh. And there they were, all the nice files. I should have realized, with a new computer. Somehow I never remember to do that.

But many, many thanks for taking the trouble to explain. I'll tag this in case of later problems.

[knullabulla.livejournal.com]

Oh good! Do let me know how this computer treats you. I'm going to be needing a laptop when I start school, and I'd love to hear your feedback about Dell.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I used to hate Dell when they made me buy them for work. But then I got this desktop since it was so cheap, and it's been good for four years--which is a long honorable life in computer years. I thought long and hard about a Mac, but decided to go the cheap route with the laptop, too. Not that it was very cheap, since I wanted a lot of warranties and tech support.

I'm sure I'll be either ranting or raving pretty soon. Also getting into wireless for the first time with the laptop, but the good news is I'm taking it out to SF to visit my geek son and his also geek partner, who can help me then with getting that going, if I don't figure it out on my own.