Anyone have any ideas as to why Windows detects my cdrom yet when I go into my bios during bootup it doesn't see any IDE cdrom drive? it has the list of all my drives and for primary master IDE and slave it just says "none"

I am trying to do a clean install of windows on my new harddrive but I cannot boot from cd because the BIOS isn't seeing the drive..

I just installed a program from cd so I know the drive is working.

thanks for any tips!

 

1. virus.

2. your machine "lost" the driver.

3. dead or dying drive.


if your machine cant see it in BIOS, i vote #3.

if windows cant see it, #1 and 2 in that order...

 

Why would it be a virus in the bios? I can understand if it was the opposite, cd in the bios, but no drive in windows.

I would see if the bios has auto detect on of the cd drive. I can't really think of what else could be causing that. I would try asking google, and see what comes up.

 

i say #3 as well... but i've seen a perfectly good cdrom not found under the BIOS simply because it's old (no driver?). just put a newer one in and you should be okay.

 

^^Ya I googled the hell out of it (thats funny googled doesn't show up as a misspelled word in firefox haha)

yeah no way is it a virus.. because well.. it shows up in windows. and if it was a virus attacking my BIOS i am sure it'd remove the "sight" of my harddrives while it was at it. i dunno maybe not.

but in windows it works just fine.. so thats really odd.

I will try the driver.. but.. how would an optical drive's driver in windows affect it in the bios? totally separate.

 

also maybe a BIOS update will fix it. I guess I can try that..

either way I am ordering a new SATA DVD-RW for 26 dollars off newegg.. so I guess I will deal with this windows install for now.

 

Try unplugging and then plugging it in again. If you have an extra cdrom/dvd rom drive lying around, try that and see if it's really your drive, the cables, or even the motherboard.

So when you say it isn't recognize, you're going into the bios set up and looking in there? And when you press F12 to boot from something besides your hard drive, the cd rom isnt listed?

 

^^went to the manual boot menu and only things listed are the floppy/harddrives..

then in the BIOS menu nothing is listed under IDE slave/master it just says "none" next to it.

i just find it odd that my BIOS doesn't see it yet windows does.

 

where did i say virus in the bios?

 

check bios to see if it is even reading the drive...that would be the first place i would've checked

 

bios contains drivers as well, maybe it just doesn't have the driver for your cdrom. happens with new bios and older cdroms.

 

Have you tried going into control panel > performance/maintenance > system > hardware tab then device manager to see if there is a yellow question mark?

 

^^ya know i didn't think of that. i mean its working in windows but still might be messed up.

@ldivinag you said virus.. and im saying it works in windows so i figured you meant bios because thats where the problem is.

 

nope... its fine. just checked.. hmm.

 

power off your computer, pull out both devices attached to the IDE ribbon cable taking note of witch device is attached to the "middle" and "end" of the ribbon.
The device plugged in to the middle of the cable should have it's jumper set to secondary/slave or cable select. the drive at the end should be jumpered primary or cable select.

Rarely do you have to set a hard drive to cable select, but I have seen it where CD/DVD drives require it no matter which end or middle of the ribbon they are on.

Good luck.