laptop CDROM issue

The CDROM in my Dell Laptop is not reading any CDs. I just found out last night. It was working fine a few weeks ago. When I insert a CD, I do not see the CD drive (E on the Windows Explorer, either. Two things come to my mind: 1. CDROM hardware failure, or 2. CDROM driver corruption. Should I try to download a driver and try again? Any other software checks I can run to diagnose the problem without opening up the laptop? Thanks.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks Forums!

When you put a CD in, does it spin up? Do the led lights flash?

Go into your device manager and see if the CDROM is listed there and if it is indicated to have a problem. If it is listed then your system recognizes it but the driver may not be correct or corrupted as you said. Try updating the driver with the driver from the Dell website.

If that does not work then go to the Add/Remove hardware in the control pannel and see if you can get the computer to recognize the CDROM from there. If it doesn't find it, then go back to your device manager and remove the CDROM from the hardware profile and then reboot and let Windows find it again. When it asks what driver you want to install give it the path to wherever you installed the Dell driver (it is best to make a folder under your C: root fror this) and let it do its thing.

If this doesn't work then you are going to have to physically remove the CDROM from the laptop and try to re-seat it and see what happens when you reboot.

There may be other options to troubleshoot but this should get you started.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Per your suggestion, I uninstalling the device and let the computer install it again. It works fine now.