how do you change out a dvd/cd writer in a dell computer?

Answer 1

Pretty easy. Just remove the cover, remove the screws holding the DVD drive, unplug the power cord, the ribbon cord and the cord to the sound card, if applicable, and remove drive. To insert follow the reverse procedure, but make sure jumpers are set correctly. If you have a single drive, then it should be set either to Master or Cable Select. If you have two optical drives, then You can either have one master and one slave
(if you boot the computer from CD/DVD, that unit should NOT be set to slave), or both can be set at Cable select. You never want to have 2 masters or 2 slaves.

Answer 2

simply unplug the pc, take both sides off and unscrew the little screws in the sides of the cd player, unplug both connections on the back of it and slide it out, do the reverse to install new one making sure if you only use one cd drive the jumper on the back is set to master, new ones normally are