CD/DVD drive no longer works.

[Flarecobra]

I posted that at midnight, and I was starting to get tired. And I couldn't see the bios. They flash by too fast.

EDIT: Discovered why. Laser reader isn't working. I'm gonna need to replace it. >_<

[akaSM]

You can get to the bios almost as soon as you turn your PC on. Just turn it on and you should see something like "Press F2 to enter setup"

The key can be anything other than F2.

[synkr0nized]

Right -- the thing that "flashes by" is actually just the POST before the BIOS hands off control to the bootable disk/partition. Getting into the BIOS setup program itself should net you the means to look at the detected drives as well as information about your processor and memory among other tools. It's a good way to make sure your hardware is connected and detecting correctly/playing with each other correctly. If it is, troubleshooting efforts can likely focus on issues within the OS environment.


You can get similar information within the OS, too, however. Programs like CPU-Z and coretemp can make use of the same sensors and data on your motherboard and hardware that BIOS reports to provide you with the technical information you may be looking for; however in this case if BIOS isn't having trouble seeing your drive and the OS is any program run in Windows will have the same problem of not seeing it (at least I think this should be true).


Another thing you can do to check is put a bootable CD-ROM or DVD in the optical drive. If your BIOS is set to boot from the CD/DVD drive before trying hard drives, you will be able to see if it detects the disk and boots whatever it is you put in there. You can adjust the boot priority in BIOS to do this if needed without harming your computer's normal functionality.

Along the same path, you could use a live CD (e.g. Knoppix) to boot an OS from the optical drive and make sure things are working, but that's overkill in this situation.