_NEC DVD+RW ND 1100A

artistb,

Thank you for visiting the Dell Community Forum.

The first thing I would advise is checking to see if the drive is able to read the data from a DVD disk. Insert a DVD disk (try this with a couple different DVD titles to make sure it is not a problem with a particular title), go to My Computer, right click on your DVD drive icon and click Open. If the system is able to read the disk, it should give you a directory list of files on the disk; if the system is able to read the structure, the problem you are having is most likely software related. If unable to read the data structure, you may have a hardware problem with the drive.

If the disk is not read from within Windows, try it from a command prompt to further isolate if the issue is caused by a software issue. To test the drive you will need some DVDs and CDROM boot diskette. You can download a CDROM boot disk from our web site to use. From the Dell Download page search for and download the file DIAGFT32.EXE – once this file is downloaded, run the file and it will extract to a floppy disk to create a CDROM bootable floppy disk.

Put both of these (floppy disk & DVD) in the drives and restart your system. At the startup menu, pick the option to start with CDROM support. This will boot the system to an A:\ prompt and try to load the CDROM drivers; it should tell you what drive letter it assigns to the DVD-ROM drive, usually D: or E:. From the A: prompt, type in D: (or what ever drive letter was assigned) and then press ENTER. Next type in DIR and press enter; this should give you a directory listing of the DVD file structure. If it gives you a directory of files, then the DVD drive is most likely mechanically working and you will need to trouble-shoot the software on the system. If you get some sort of error message, then you will need to do hardware trouble-shooting on the DVD-ROM drive.

If the drive does not read when you boot from the floppy disk, the next thing to try is clearing the NVRAM (see below) and reseating (unplugging and reconnecting) the data cable (wide grey ribbon cable) for the DVD-ROM at both ends before repeating the test above. If the drive is still not reading, you will want to contact Dell technical support as the drive may need to be replaced.

You can find information on clearing the NVRAM on Dimension systems in the Dell Online Knowledge Base article located at the following web address:
http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?DN=1023538

I can now get the NEC DVD player to recognize....DVD's it can play DVD movies and data DVD's.  I still cannot get it to recognize a blank DVD+RW.....for recording.

artistb