Do you always need a wire connection between the sound card and your cd-rom or dvd players? especially if the drives are sata's? My older cdrom is not sata and has pins on the back of it....necessary or not....thanks.

Have you tried reseating the CD rom;verify all the connectors are securely fastened. What type of Dell is this; a tower, desktop, or laptop? If you know how to open the case then proceed with reseating as follows:

First power down the system
After opening the case
locate the CDROM
If this is a new system it is probably connected using a SATA connector (black cable with a blue connector and power connector.)
At the back of the remove each connector then reconnect the cable
The SATA or Parrellel cable has a connector at both ends so trace the cable and re-seat the connector on the motherboard as well.
close the case
boot the system back up
test the cdrom

Check the cables, either DC supply to CD Drive or Data cable from CD Drive to Mainboard (Sata or Pata connection)

IDE devices have different "data" and "power" connectors than SATA drives.

So, you need a motherboard with IDE connectors, if you wish to connect an IDE disk-drive (or CD/DVD), and you need a motherboard with SATA connectors, if you wish to connect a SATA device.

Similarly, the connectors on the power-supply must be compatible with the sockets on the disk-drive (or CD/DVD) drives, so that the devices can get power.

You could possibly purchase a short IDE-to-SATA power-adapter, if you have a SATA device, but there are no SATA power-connectors on your power-supply.

go to start -> run here in the run box write devmgmt.msc This will lead to device manager here in disk drives or sata-ata remove ur cdrom driver by right clicking it and choose uninstall. This will uninstall the drivers for cdrom and now at the top where ur computer name displayed right click on it and select scan for hardware changes. It will automatically install drivers for it.

If its not in BIOS then sounds like a hardware problem. usually only 2 cables connects to the cdrom, power & ide OR sata. usually these two wouldnt be disconnected so i suspect bad drive.

What mother board is it? you have sata and ide drives.. new technology is sata which is connected with sata cable to *********** board and appropriate pover coard, the older teconlogy is ide, which is connected with ide (master slave) cable frm you motehr board to you drive... just post what mother board and i could be more specific...

To a desktop computer?

Depending on the connectors you either have a 4pin power connector and a 40pin ide connector.

you should have both of those on all desktop computers.

the drive could also have those flat connectors, then you would need a SATA power connector and a SATA data cable.

if your motherboard doesn't have a SATA connector then you need to get a Pci - sata card http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=pci+sata

that will give you the sata data connectors. then you need sata power for it if your computer doesn't have a flat power connector then you need to purchase a converter. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812189005


the drive wont need anything else, just plug it in and it should work. remember when working inside the computer always unplug all cables.

if you use the 40pin connector then you might need to check on a jumper setting incase the drive doesn't work, you can read the jumper settings on top of the drive, and on the back of the drive you should have 6 pins close to the 40pin connector, there should be a small plastic / inside metal connector jumper, set it to the correct position, master or slave, if there is another device connected in the ide cable then set it to slave. if it doesn't work that way then set it to master.

if it doesn't work on either one, then get someone to look at it.

I had the same problem with the GH22 Internal drive on vista. Assuming this is the only cd drive you have, just go to the device manager and remove/uninstall anything under "DVD/CD Rom Drives" then restart. It should get picked up and recognized properly. It took a couple of restarts to work. For refrence, I only have the LG GH22NP20 installed, what appears in device manager are 2 items... (1)HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NP20 SCSI CdRom Device... (2) KU1051Q EAG855E SCSI CdRom Device... Incase you have multiple cd drives, this should help tell em appart. Enjoy. IDK399

Do you have seperate DVD and CD drives?
Can you get sound when you play a CD on the CD drive?
If you answer yes to both of these questions, this might be your answer.

This applies to IDE drives, not to the new SATA.
In order for the sound to get from the player there is a cable that connects the drive to your sound card. This cable is probably connected to the CD. Move it to the DVD drive since the DVD drive will also play CDs.

Same solution as posted before if you need to boot from a DVD: take a Dell laptop CD/DVD combo drive, remove the screws and all and exchange the PowerVault CD drive unit with it. Same internal connector. Can't remember what model I stuck in, but I had to keep the front panel of the drive since it was slightly different, I probably could have glued it, but.... That's a server machine no one is ever going to see but me! :)

That also gave me a CD-Burner which is a decent addition in case you need to quickly burn a CD/make a backup/boot disk (like a "ultimate Windows CD" boot to fix anything that could go wrong).