Wont boot/recognize cd drive

Hi guys,

I got an Alienware m14x last year, very happy with it, until a while ago it stopped booting. all i get is a black screen with an underscore, then the alien-head logo screen (with f2 - setup, f12 - boot options), back and forth forever.

All the included diagnostics pass. I pulled the hard drive, and copied all the important files to my homebuilt, so i think its an issue with the windows files.

So being a dutiful geek, I pulled out the Win7 restore disc, inserted, and went to the boot menu. The CD drive option isnt there. being a pre-made, there's basically no bios options, and the cd drive isnt showing up there either. the drive itself works just fine/spins up etc.

How can I boot up/restore to factory settings without access to a cd drive? or get it to recognize the drive?

Thanks for your help.