Hello,

Solved.... sort of!

This morning I turned the laptop on, with the wi-fi switched off (I'm on limited data and all this new OS installing is eating it ridiculously fast), and the DVD/CD...

I'd still like to know the answer to this question!

As I said in my first post, there are no entries for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.

Besides which, I'm not sure why right-clicking alone would do anything at all. Did you mean to say...

OK, I tried that (set it to Win 7 and to XP), but it still said the computer didn't meet minimum requirements. That sounds to me like it's not meeting minimum hardware requirements in some way...?
...

Hello,

I wasn't intending to run the Win7 Home 64 disc using the key on the DVD case anyway, because I'm sure it's in use already. What I don't know is whether the key I have for the 32-bit OEM...

Hello,

The PC was an old one from my company that actually had XP on it when I got it, though the authentication key sticker in the battery compartment is for Win 7 Pro OA (Dell). Because I...

OK, I can try that, but before I do, what makes you think this is a BIOS issue?

Surely if there was something wrong at that basic level, I wouldn't be able to access the drive as I can currently...

Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions.

The DVD drive looks fine. As I said, it's no problem when booted to Linux, but anyway I ran the BIOS diagnostic tests and they came up clean. And, the laptop...

Hello,

I've just done a clean install of Win 10 on a Dell Latitude E6410. I didn't have acccess to Dell's own driver setup discs, so it's just what I got from Microsoft. Windows appears to run OK,...