Hard Drive Light Comes On and System Bogs Down A Lot

CD ROM device

Poor old Dell, my well used desktop PC. Getting on up in her years and wearing out. Actually, the CD ROM drive wore out about two to three years ago. I'd put in a CD and the computer would wheeze and the blue screen of death would appear. A notice of a FATAL ERROR would appear, so I didn't do that too many times to be convinced to not do it again.

Noticed lately the tiny green hard drive in use light would come on and then everything froze on screen. Seems there is a connection between a dead/dying CD ROM drive and the hard drive light coming on a lot. The new DVD read/writeable drive is coming next week. Going to install it and see if that stops the excessive use of the hard drive and it's little green light annoyingly informing me the Dell is tired and to leave it alone. If that doesn't fix the problem, then I can download software called SeaTools for DOS. See if that works if replacing the CD ROM drive doesn't. I'll be able to read and burn disks! That's nice.