The problem is with the docking station and his
palm cradle. The DVD drive works fine when the
laptop isn't docked but no matter what changes you
make, a conflict occurs between the COM1 port
(Palm Cradle) and the secondary IDE (the dvd drive). 

Don said that we installed 3rd party software
because of how old his palm is, and, if I had to
guess, I would say that this software is forcing
the Palm to use IRQ 15 as its interrupt request
which conflicts with the secondary IDE which also
uses 15. The IDE IRQ can't be changed, or at least
I don't know how to do it. The options aren't
given in the hardware manager screen, but it may
be possible to do it in the bios somehow. 

Don said he can't go without his laptop yet so I
am closing and flagging this request. 

When this task is reopened, be sure to note when
we can take his laptop.

I called and left a message requesting a call back
when the laptop is available for a tech to take a
look at it.