Very slow in booting and optical drive not working

You have problem with you optic - DVD rom. try to remove it and back it again and do this with you HDD drive.

reset pram.


Install os system disk and boot from optical drive by holding down letter C.

go to disk utilities and go through all four options.

Go into BIOS by pressing correct F key that is noted during boot. Make USB drive 1rst boot, save and exit.

The USB installation also needs to be bootable and made so with software like Novicorp

In the bios, is the optical drive listed as a boot option. I have seen were people have disabled the optical and when you disconect everything else it will be forced to boot from it. If you have a USB optical, you might even try it. Just make sure that you have the USB devices on the boot options list. You may also move the Optical drive to your first boot option, sometimes that will make all the difference.

Hope some portion of this helps

Is it the burner that is not working or it is the software?

Try one of these free burners to test the drive http://tinyurl.com/ledqnu

If it is the burner that is not working you probably need to replace the drive as there are usually no serviceable parts in a DVD drive.

Go to nearby shop and change the hard disk or ram(the defective one).

If your system has one optical drive, press F12 when the Dell screen comes up at boot. then select the drive...
If you have more than one optical drive, the master is the only one that can boot(per Dell).
If the above (F12) does not work, you can try changing the boot order in the BIOS to:
First--CD/DVD
Second--IDE-0 (hard drive)
Third--(any other devices)

Make sure that the operating system cd has no smudges, dirt, dust, etc on it.

What I would do since you have two optical drives in the system. Disconnect one of the drives at first and only hook up one of the optical drives and make sure the jumper on the back is set to master.

Go into the BIOS and reset the bios defaults and have it redect the hardware in the system after this you'll get the same message so reboot into the BIOS and set the optical drive as the first boot device. Hopefully it will read the cd and you press and key to boot up off of the cd.

If this doesn't work then repeat all the steps i mentioned for the 2nd optical drive. Hopefully it will read the cd properly with this drive. Im checking to see if one or both drives have bad lasers in them.

If the 2nd drive doesn't read it then at this point disconnect the hard drive completely from the system and then turn it on and see if the optical drive can read the cd, if it does at this point then that means your new hard drive is defective cause its shorting out the secondary controller on your motherboard.

Let me know how things go and I'll help you further if you need some more help.

1. Make sure the two cables are installed in the back of the optical drive.
2. When you start your computer, press the key that it tells you to go into system setup or BIOS. From there, you need to find the boot device and/or boot order option and select the optical drive as the first boot device.
3. Press F10 to save and exit, making sure the first recovery disc is in the optical drive.
4. Save and exit; your computer should boot now from the optical drive.

how long does the post takes it to finish before it goes to boot? are there external device connected to your computer like a printer or external hard drive or flush drive? try updating your bios and motherboard chipset.