Optical drive making PC not work

blahcomp222

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Mar 23, 2014
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I installed windows 8 a couple months ago and then my optical drive stopped working. It worked for the Windows 8 install disc but when I put any disc in after that, nothing at all happens.
It doesn't show anything in "My Computer" aka "This Computer" for W8 when I put a disc in.

I tried 3 other optical drives including a brand new one. The PC won't even boot Windows with any other optical drive except the original one when the problem started which is strange.

The ribbon-like cable that connects the data from the HDD and Optical to the motherboard: I tried a different one but windows won't even boot. Error "no drive found" or something.
I tried different combinations of HDD and Optical getting the 1st or 2nd (out of two on this ribbon) data connection on the ribbon cable. The PC only works if the HDD gets the 2nd data connection on the ribbon cable which is strange because the case is built so that the optical drive must be placed above the HDD so plugging the 2nd data port to the HDD requires bending it all out of shape.

BIOS had diskette as 1st boot then HDD then optical then NIC card, so I changed it to HDD as first even though I never hit any key during start up to boot from a CD which wasn't even in the optical drive. But that gave the same errors. I changed all 4 boot to orders as the HDD but it still didn't fix anything either. I changed it back to normal.

I already tried other data ribbon cables so I guess it's not. It wouldn't even boot windows unless I use the original data ribbon wire I have. I tried a brand new optical and two others.




Any ideas? Thanks.