I’ve been having all sorts of bizarre problems with my computer lately. Because of that, I’ve been fooling around some with the innards and the BIOS, but I’ve pretty much stayed within the realm of things I understand (ie not messing around with BIOS settings if I don’t understand what they are for, etc.). Somehow in all this my computer has stopped recognizing my DVD drive. I made sure that the plugs are firmly in place. The BIOS apparently sees it, because it’s available as a boot source through the BIOS (I assume that means the BIOS currently recognizes it – not that it was there at one time but might now be gone). But when I go into XP, it’s not there. Doesn’t show up under “My Computer,” CDs and DVDs put in there don’t autorun, etc. It’s getting power and it’s spinning up (at least, the drive light comes on when I put a CD in it), but apparently not talking to the computer for some reason. I tried going through “Add new hardware” but couldn’t find any way to designate a DVD-ROM as my new hardware, and the auto-search didn’t detect it. Any clue how I can tell XP that there’s a DVD drive there that it should listen to?
Try out this procedure (method 1). It has worked in all cases that I’ve dealt with over the years. It may not be the solution for your problem, but it’s worth trying anyway.
Drives sometimes have those symptoms when they’re dead. Can you test it anywhere else?
Boot source is not a good indication of whether the BIOS recognized the DVD drive. Instead, go to the screen where it is showing you the disk connections, like “Primary” and “Secondary”. Your DVD drive should show up on the IDE channel that you’ve hooked up using the IDE cable. If its name is present, then the BIOS has recognized your drive.