I booted up one of my old computers recently and for some reason neither the CD ROM or DVD ROM drive doesn't appear to be recognized. I don't even see it recognized in the BIOS. I don't see it either in the Device Manager. I initially thought it was a IDE Cable problem, but when I swapped it with the Hard Drive IDE cable, the HD worked fine, but still the CD ROM and DVD ROM isn't being recognized. The power to the CD ROM/DVD Rom works fine, because the disc drives open and close. I don't really know what the problem is. The computer also sometimes spontaneously restarts Is this a problem with the motherboard? CMOS battery? Virus possibly? Advice? Discuss?
A missing CD drive is a classic symptom of a master boot record virus. I recommend running a virus scan boot disk.
