I have an 11 month old Dell Inspiron. Since it was 1 month old I have had problems with CD/DVD drive not reading CDs/DVDs that I keep important data and pictures on. It will work for a while but about every 2 months I'm on the phone with Dell. I've had to reformat 3 times, reinstall Roxio 3 times. They said my CDs and DVDs had gone bad. I asked all of them? Nope, they read fine on another PC I have with XP. Dell put in new CD/DVD drive. That didn't even work when the Tech guy was here. Dell said I needed more memory, put in 3GB still didn't help. They told me that I could only use Sony CDs/DVDs. Tried that, nope didn't help. Any ideas what it refuses to read my CDs/DVDs off and on? Also twice my CD/DVD drive has disappeared when I wanted to copy a disc. It showed no DVD drive. Got it back for now. I think it's a Vista problem. Vista is a pain. I am planing on going back to Windows XP. My warranty expires soon and why need it if Dell can't fix my PC? Thanks. Oh, Dell told me if I put XP on they wouldn't honor my warranty any longer.

Dell is a bunch of idiots. You DON'T need more RAM if you can't read CD's or DVD's. I'm really sorry you were played by them. Perhaps the drive controller or the cable itself is going bad. Try plugging the cable into another port or just switching to another cable alltogether. I'm guessing since it's a Dell it's a SATA (small L shaped connector). There should be 2-4 connectors on the main board inside the PC case if you are lucky.

Thank you so much for your response to my delema with my Dell. Unfortunately I tried your ideas and that didn't solve the problem either. Today I have been copying data from my PC to Cd's and DVD's so I can take it to someone qualified to repair. It was making the data CD's and DVD's just fine. I pulled them out and put them back in and they were there with all the data on them. In the middle of the project, all of a sudden it stopped copying data to a DVD (again!) and now it won't recognize them or read them again. I am so frustrated. Just imagine, Dell happened to call in the middle of all of this mess and I gave them an ear full. They said they would report it to Dell Support and have them contact me to get if fixed. I don't think so. Again I appreciate your help and if anyone has other ideas I'm open to solutions to this problem (other than tossing it out in the yard).

At this point it would have to be the motherboard. Hopefully, they'll get your computer going again.

Thanks for all of your suggestions. I gave up on Dell and took it to a private repairman. We took Vista off and put on Windows XP and no more drive or CD/DVD problems. He said my motherboard is fine. Just had a lot of hang ups from Vista. Thanks again.