It's not the drive it's Windows doing it, I still get it using the latest O/S from time to time.
Simple checks I would suggest are these.
1 - Check connections
2 - Boot connected
3 - Once booted and loaded go to disk management and if it's there either remove the drive letter, or if it doesn't have one set one, don't choose to high though, stay below H, hth.
Another thought as it's a Dell, they put their own "protection" software on their machines, you may find a program called Disk Sentinal or similar, if you can get rid of it it would be an advantage, if you can I would wipe the original drive and fresh install, if you have one of those one page bios' be warned this can lock the optical drive out, I believe the issue is in the drives FW itself rather than the bios though, so either get a FW update from the optical drive makers site or use one that's never seen Dell before.
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Please post specs it helps a great deal.
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