Check cable connections — Check the HDD cable connections (see Hard Drive Assembly (Optional)), and NVRAM module (see NVRAM Module) to ensure that
they are seated properly.
Clean the drive or disc — use commercially available disc cleaning materials to ensure the disc and optical drive are clean.
Run the Hardware Troubleshooter — See Hardware Troubleshooter.
Run the Dell Diagnostics — See Dell Diagnostics.
Optical drive problems (optional, external)
Adjust the Windows volume control —
l Click the speaker icon in the lower-right corner of your screen.
l Ensure that the volume is turned up by clicking the slidebar and dragging it up.
l Ensure that the sound is not muted by clicking any boxes that are checked.
Check the speakers — See Sound and Speaker Problems.
Problems writing to an optical drive
Close other programs — Theopticaldrivemustreceiveasteadystreamofdataduringthewritingprocess.Ifthestreamisinterrupted,anerroroccurs.Try
closing all programs before you write to the optical drive.
Turn off standby mode in Windows before writing to a disc — Search for the keyword standby in Windows Help and Support for information on power
management modes.
Hard drive problems
Run Check Disk —
Windows XP Extended:
1. Log in to the system as a user with administrative privileges.
2. Right-click the Start button, and click Explore.
3. In the Folders list, right-click the disk you want to check (OS(C:), or OS(D:), or etc.) and click Properties.
4. Click Tools® Check Now.
5. Click Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors and click Start.
6. If a disk problem is found, follow the screen instructions to fix the problem.
Windows XP:
1. Click Start and click My Computer.
2. Right-click Local Disk C:.
3. Click Properties® Tools® Check Now.
