I recently purchased a Dell laptop with a DVD/CD player. The laptop initially came with Windows 2000 on it. I was unable to get the DVD player to read regular CDs, so I could not load any of my other software. I work with Dell tech service to no avail. I did upgrade to WinDVD 3.1 (per Dell's suggestion). Dell finally suggested that Windows 2000 would just not handle the DVD/CD player since W2K was not built for multimedia. So I installed Windows 98SE uisng the DVD/CD drive. Wow, I was excited because the drive was reading the Windows 98SE CD for the OS install. Once the install was completed, the problem remained. I have flashed the BIOS on the laptop as well as applied all of Microsoft's, Dell's and WinDVD patches. Since the DVD/CD player was able to read the Windows 98SE CD, I tried to use different generic CD drivers loaded from config.sys. Now the DVD does not read at all. In reading this list, I discovered that the OAKCDROM generic driver will not work with the DVD. So which generic CD driver should I use? There are 5 or 6 of them on the Windows 98SE bootdisk. I have no clue which driver worked when I loaded Windows 98SE initially using the DVD/CD drive. There are no apparent problems indicated in Device Manager. DMA is NOT checked. Should it be? What else should I investigate? Thank you so much for your time and assistance!

ok now you said you had problems with it using 2000 windows as noted by your here://Windows 2000 on it. I was unable to get the DVD player to read regular CDs,/// now you have a driver problem with 98e windows recognizing the drivers wouldnt you think the Dvd/cd player be defective? NEW is not allways good you know.

this is the key it is dead you said this: // I was excited because the drive was reading the Windows 98SE CD for the OS install. Once the install was completed, the problem remained/// it remains DOD! from dell

You may have gone too far over the edge: Go back to DELL, tell them that they sold a Machine that has DVD-ROM and a Software DVD Player, yet it does not function as it should. The DVD-ROM should read an optical disc DVD Data, DVD Movie, CD Data, CD Audio etc. If they cannot assist you to get it functioning then give you a full refund or a system that does! They cannot sell goods which do not function as to their advertised specifications. SIMPLE, the problem is theirs NOT yours.