I think Dells use the cable select jumper or CS, on their IDE devices. Did you look in safe mode. I had sort of the same, I installed a trial cd burning software. I am trying to remeber the name. After the time limit was up, I removed the program, I remember now... it was Gear, leaves behind a driver that totally screws your pc, I could not burn dvds any more. Did you have this prog on your pc ?