Emachine won't detect CD-RW/DVD-R drive at startup

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Hay I have my moms old Emachine that doesn't work the first problem I had was it could not detect the hard drive I fixed that by replacing it with a new one. The problem I have now is it won't detect CD-RW/DVD-R drive at startup the activity light won't come on and I done everything I could like checking the cables still doesn't work. Any suggestions.

Have you looked at "boot order" in the machine's BIOS?

Press "Delete" (I think) at machine startup and take a look at your BIOS settings ... and if you are planning to install an operating system, there are actually several things you should check there before proceeding ... and it could also be a very good idea to update ("flash") your BIOS before going any further at all.

What model is your eMachine?

Those are some well-built machines worth updating/upgrading in certain situations.

also if its not detecting the CD/DVD-RW drive, you might want to take a look at the master/slave settings on both that AND the hard-drive. Also make sure the connections are seated right blah blah blah. Sometimes the big issues are just little mistakes that are easily solvable.

This only really applys to IDE drives though, if you are using SATA, id check in the BIOS, make sure boot order is set right among other things.

The model is w3623

Maybe you already know you can get Vista drivers here:

http://www.emachines.com/support/drivers.html

Are you using a SATA drive?

Is the CD/DVD-RW SATA or PATA?

Sometimes, drives just die and I've seen power supplies with cheap capacitors take out drives and components in computers. Check the cables, and check the drive. If you have access to a known good drive, use that for testing purposes.

Is the drive itself working when the computer is booted? I have an EMachines computer and the DVD drive is broken, Google tells me it's a common problem.

It's a ide drive