All I wanted was a simple, good old-fashioned driver...

[DeAnna]

Help? LOL

My T23 came only with a DVD-rom. So, to burn backups, etc., I bought a (brand new) CD-RW/DVD Combo IV Ultrabay 2000 thru e-bay.

I received it Saturday, popped it in, and Windows (XPPro SP2) loaded it with its own MSoft drivers. (It came with InterVideo WinDVD v4 and Nero v6, but no installation software.)

I went to IBM looking for the latest drivers and, typing in the fru #s gave me nothing... and I'm lost as to what to do about what it did list under other downloads for my model.

Can anyone here help me?

Under T23 cd-rw/dvd combo drive downloads, it lists for my model GCC-4240N:

CD-RW IBM RecordNow application update for Windows 2000 and Windows XP - ThinkPad General 2004-03-19
Early OBI Optical drives may have shipped with CD-RW software which did not support Windows XP. This update provides that support.

Question: Is Record Now important? Or could/should I just use Nero?

CD-RW/DVD combo drive Firmware Update utility diskette - ThinkPad General 2004-02-23
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41020
(This utility will examine [and] check the firmware revision of the drive and judge whether your system requires a firmware update or not. If required, it will prompt you to run the firmware update program for your drive.)

I have no floppy drive... do I need this? It sounds important, but ...how do I do it without a fd?

EasyEject Utility for Windows 2000/XP - ThinkPad General 2004-02-18
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-44035

I have no idea what this is or if I need it, but it looks like a pain to install. lol

Sorry for the length and all, but ... I'm really stumped... and nervous about this one.

[sugo]

You don't need Record Now. Nero 6 should be able to recognize your drive and burn discs.

[RaysMD]

you don't even need that CD. Windows XP drivers are fine.

just enjoy your drive.

[DeAnna]

Thank you both - that's what I was hoping to hear.

Anyone know if I can do without the Easy Eject utility and/or the Firmware Upgrade utility as well?

I know a lot of us don't have floppy drives... if these are necessary, surely there's a work-around...?

[lvlolvlo]

well that ezeject this is primarly used for hotswapping. on the side of my cd drive there is a switch which i push and this handle pops out allowing me to pull it to remove the cdrw drive. on the software side of things it sends a signal to the os to stop the drive. you can do the same thing manually by double clicking on the green arrow with a card under it in your system tray and choose youre cd drive and hit stop. so in otherwords, you don't really need it, but if you swap it out of the system alot you might want to consider getting it.

as for the firmware, i have no idea.

[DeAnna]

Thank you, lvlolvlo

Mine seems to work fine as is, and I don't even foresee switching it at all now. : )

I guess I'll just go ahead without trying to update the firmware or whatever drivers, since I stilll have no clue how they expect those of us without floppy drives to install it.