Hello Phill,
Apologies for the late reply Chris, got sidetracked yesterday afternoon
No problem whatsoever Phill. I know you have an incredibly busy life!
Wasn`t sure you still used the Dell on the Internet so suggested what I thought was the safest option.
I have to confess that I still find myself using the internet on the Dell sometimes, usually when working with my Word files on it - and my husband still uses it for everything. Didn't mean to dismiss your suggestion though. Maybe my husband would be okay with using Lunascape. (Is Mathon safe to use BTW?).
The reason I was trying to burn an ISO to DVD was to try out a version of Linux. Somebody gave me a Linux CD but it wouldn't work on this computer, so I was going to burn a version recommended for older computers. That's when I ran into my DVD drive problem. (I could always burn it to a thumb drive, of course, but got waylaid by the DVD drive issues.)
Thank you very much indeed for your detailed reply and suggestions re. the DVD/CD drives. No, I was not aware that DVD/CD capable drives have separate lasers for each.
Yesterday evening I methodically worked through all the suggestions you gave, but nothing worked. It does indeed seem that both drives are faulty now. (When things go wrong in my world, they do tend to go wrong rather spectacularly!
)
It is all good though, as there has been a change of focus here! I was telling my husband about the problems with the CD/DVD drives while he was giving me a lift somewhere yesterday afternoon (The best time to get his attention!
). He asked could we replace the drives - and I said that would be a crazy idea on such an old computer, even if it was possible. The outcome of our conversation was that he now thinks it would be a good idea to buy a new computer. So, that it what we are now (at last!) looking to do! (Yippeeee!
)
Do you have any advice you can give me on buying a new computer, please? In particular, what should we look for as far as getting the best possible sound, as that is important to me because I play music a lot on here. Our current Dell has 5 speakers and the sound has been quite good, so I do not want to get a computer on which the sound quality would be poor.
I think I am right in saying that many of the latest computers have much more storage than the old ones and that will be great! I really like Windows 10 on the notebook, at least so far, so it should not be too much of a problem getting used to it (some guys at a computer club I tried out recently were turning their noses up at Windows 10, but I don't know why; although possibly I have just not yet discovered the drawbacks!
It will be strange not to be still in the dark ages as far as our computer life is concerned though. In a way I quite liked the fact we still had a very old computer and OS, in spite of the security issues. Maybe I just like to be different though!
Thanks again for all your help with this.
Chris.
Edited by Channeal, 16 November 2016 - 05:24 AM.