To determine if the problem is software or hardware try booting to a known bootable CD. If the drive can read the CD from the boot then it may be a Windows issue. If it can't then the drive is probably defective. You MUST have the boot order set for the CD before the HDrive and you must hit any key when prompted.

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Not a big problem Lauro, but no punctuation does make it a little hard to read. Adding a space after a period or comma also helps the readability.

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Some laptops may require special drivers for an optical (CD or DVD) drive, but otherwise Windows has the generic drivers built in for any other IDE connected optical drive. I'm assuming you have an IDE connected optical drive, and not a SCSI connected drive - the latter may require special drivers - or a really old proprietary CD-rom drive (it would probably be no more than 4X), which usually does require special drivers. All optical drives only require the power connector from the PS be connected to them and the computer to be running in order to open and close the drive, and to spin a disk when a disk is first inserted. If the drive is IDE connected, if it's data cable connection is right and there is nothing wrong with the cable, and the jumper setting on the drive (master, slave, or cable select) is correct , if the drive is detected properly you usually see the model name of the drive while booting on the first screen, in some bioses you may also see the drive is being detected in Setup, and the drive will detected in Windows no problem as long as the main chipset drivers have been loaded for the mboard. You often must have the main chipset drivers installed for the mboard in order for the optical drive to be recognized properly. Whenever you load Windows from a regular Windows CD (or DVD) from scratch, after Setup is finished you must load the drivers for the mboard, particularly the main chipset drivers, in order for Windows to have the proper drivers for and information about your mboard hardware, including it's AGP or PCI-E, ACPI, and hard drive controller support. If you have the CD that came with the mboard, all the necessary drivers are on it. If you load drivers from the web, brand name system builders and mboard makers often do not have the main chipset drivers listed in the downloads for your model - in that case you must go to the maker of the main chipset's web site, get the drivers, and load them. If Windows was already loaded...... If you can see the optical drive in My Computer and Windows Explorer, and there are no yellow ? in Device Manager for the Hard Disk controllers, and there is a CD-Rom entry in Device Manager for your optical drive model, Windows is having no problems recognizing the optical drive and the main chipset drivers have probably been loaded. The optical drive, of course, must have a disk in it when you click on it in Windows. The disk must be one that has data on it that the drive can read. (E.g. if you try to read a DVD in a CD-rom (only) drive, or in a CD burner (only) drive, or try to read a CD in a DVD-rom (only) drive, Windows will not find anything.) ...... If all of the above is okay, the only things left are the drive's laser lens(es) is(are) too dirty, or the drive is defective. Try a laser lens cleaning CD in the drive. Just insert it and let the drive try to read the CD a couple of times - that's usually enough. Then insert a CD with data on it that the drive can read and try to read it in Windows. If that doesn't help, optical drives do not last forever. The thing that most commonly makes a drive no longer usable first is the bearings in the drive's motor deteriorate to the point the motor can no longer spin a disk at even 1X speed (legacy Audio CD speed) or it doesn't spin at all. It's easy to test for no spin - the CD will be in more or less the same position it was in when you inserted it, when you eject it. The led on the front of the drive will probably light up briefly when you insert a disk, even when the motor won't spin. If the led on the front of the drive does not come on, or it does come on but for a long time or blinks for a while, that's a sure sign the drive is defective for whatever reason, IF the CD or DVD in the drive is one the drive can read. "....it says device not ready" That's what it will say if the drive can't spin or can't spin at 1X speed, or if the drive is otherwise defective.

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