My girlfriend has an old PB laptop (Athlon XP Mobile 2200+ vintage) with a broken (physically snapped off!) CD ROM drive. Windows XP (original install, 4+ years old) finally gave up the ghost. in ...

Hard drives and optical drives are the most failure-prone items on a laptop. They're also among the easiest to swap out, upgrade, or, in some cases, live without. Here are the best fixes for saving, ...

Optical drives are still practical for many users, whether to play old CDs and DVDs, install software, or create backups—especially with modern laptops, which are usually supplied without a drive.