0

I have been having a problem with my Dell Inspiron M731R Laptop. The CD/DVD drive is not appearing. I have tried the usually recommended trick of removing the UpperFilter registry, but this has not fixed the problem. I checked the BIOS, which is reporting SATA ODD as Not Detected. What can I do to fix this?

silvascientist
  • 111

1 Answers1

1

There are two possibilities:

1: BIOS needs updating. I highly doubt this is the issue but there is an older BIOS update for your computer listed on Dells website. I would try running their scanning software before running the BIOS update because there is some risk involved when updating a computer BIOS. The scan and updates can be found here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/inspiron-m731r/diagnose

2: ODD has gone bad. I've rarely seen this happen in the thousands of computers I've work on but ultimately it is mechanical in nature and is well within the realm of possibility. (Could just be from a bad batch of ODD's) That being said, you can get used/new ODD's dirt cheap. Heck, I literally have dozens of these things lying around I'll give you one free if you pay shipping, I'm absolutely serious.

Anyways, often times, you can replace an ODD by unscrewing one screw on the bottom of your laptop. Usually indicated by this symbol.
enter image description here
(sorry for the poor quality, it's all a quick search provided.)
Then simply slide out the old one, take off the mounting bracket and put it on the new ODD. It's almost as easy as upgrading RAM.

All of this aside, what do you need the ODD for? What software? If you have access to another computer with a working disc drive, I can give you a couple workarounds for getting the software off the disc and working using a USB or Virtual CD drive.