Strange Issue with Modular Drive in Laptop

[Meleemaster74]

Hello,

I would first like to say that I consider myself fairly stong in troubleshooting techniques, and usually can find the answer I need on another forum before actually having to post. This time however, the situation is different.

A little while ago I purchased a used Dell Latitude D610 Laptop computer off of eBay. Everything was working fine, but I wanted to upgrade the Hard drive from a 60GB to a 120GB size. while I was formatting the drive, the laptop was sitting on my bed with the vents from the heatsink covered up.( I was unaware). The laptop then proceeded to then overheat and shut down. After rebooting, I recieved an error message:

"You have inserted a module into the computer's modular bay, but this module is not supported by your computer. The module will not be functional if left in place. You should remove it now."

At this point, the new hard drive was still not working, and the CD drive would not be recognized so I was forced to put the old HD back in and boot up windows. From there I found a bios upgrade utility from the dell web site and tried to flash the bios, no luck. Next I took the CD out, and flashed the bios again. this time it did work and I no longer recieved the error after putting the drive back in and booting. I completed the install of windows and even got to install some other programs off of CDs.

Now the problem is back, and I have exhausted every possible fix I can think of:

-I repeated the bios flash that seemed to work before, didn't work this time.
-Tried unplugging power and battery
-Tried unplugging CMOS battery to reset bios, didn't work
-Tried booting w/o a hard drive, and with the old hard drive
-Tried downgrading the BIOS to the previous version (A05 instead of A06)
-Tried using a different CD drive from another identical Laptop same error, I also tried to put the CD drive into the other laptop and it works fine, so its definitely the BIOS no the drive itself.
-Tried Resetting the ram
-started with Cd out, with it in, put it in during bootup, nothing worked.
-Also tried searching in windows to "add new Hardware" found nothing, tried to reinstall firmware for Cd drive which did not work.

Symptoms:
-When a modular device (I have tested Floppy, CD, and DVD) are connected to the Laptop during start up, I receive the error message, but they still open and close, and appear to read the discs when one is entered.
-When the modular device is not connected; no error, boots to windows, cannot see the device even after putting it in (hot swappable) and no power to the device.
- The BIOS lists the modular bay as empty even if there is a device present.


I think it has to be some problem with the connection between the modluar bay and the device, because I reset the BiOS. I hope that's not what it is, but I can't think of anything else.

I would REALLY appreciate any input from you all. Thanks