After Windows 7 upgrade, my laptop won't read CDs or DVDs

aaron_g I would suggest you check the media for any scratches and try again, also dell may have proprietary drivers for their devices (though windows in generally pretty good with generic drivers for displays and keyboards etc.)which you would need to either use at the add driver section of the beginning of the installation for windows 7 or when it finally gets to desktop......but personally I would back up your data to something else and do a clean install of win7 instead of the upgrade..are you able to roll back the install?

Thanks for the reply.

When I installed Windows 7 I chose a "custom" install which wiped my harddrive. However, my old windows documents are in a folder buried under the name "windows.old". How would I roll back the install?

And all my necessary data was already backed up onto my external drive, so I'm ok with my files.

You particular DVD drive might need the right Dell Driver.

Just go to the Dell website and go to the Support for Home users and then put in your Laptop. It looks like there are two drivers available (firmware), one for slot loading and the other for tray. The Vista ones probably don't work with 7, and it looks like Dell might not have 7 ones available. Have you check in your Device Manager (Administration Tools) to see if you have a Red "X" or Yellow "!" for any of the hardware?

Any reports?? is it working now?

Hello,

I had the same problems, you need to locate the drivers for the CD drive as when the install was done, it deleted many drivers, including the CD ROM and the driver for the touchpad. I hope this helps, if you go to Dell there are lists of drivers for various ROM's.   It has nothing to do with scratches or anything like that, it is all about the drivers.  

~Lisa