CD-RW/DVD Not Working w Power Supply

C

Crimsonnaire

Member
Hi, everyone.

I recently installed a new 300W power supply and, for some reason, the CD-RW/DVD combo drive is not functioning or showing up in 'My Computer.' I double checked to make sure that the 3 connectors involved were securely plugged in. However, something I should mention is that the first time I installed the new PSU, I had neglected to plug in the 4-pin peripheral (square shaped) to the outlet next to the CPU heatsink and started the computer up. At that time, the power was on and all the fans were spinning (though seemingly faster than normal judging from the air current), but there was no monitor feed and the HDD activity light (blinking one) was solidly on and I couldn't turn the power off from the front power button, so I had to just pull the power cord out. After plugging this square connector in, I started it and everything was running fine except for the optical drive not showing up.

Could I have overloaded and burned out the optical drive at the first bootup in which the square connector was not plugged in?

Any thoughts will be appreciated.
 
Does the bios recognize the drive? Is it an IDE or SATA drive? If its IDE, most likely you have the jumper set wrong.
 
Hi, John.

The red cable extending from it states "Serial ATA," so I guess it's a SATA. When I plug this red cord into the motherboard jack and boot up the computer, the screen stays at the introductory page for an inordinate period (20-30 seconds) before moving forward. This is the screen which says "Press F8 for Boot Menu; Press DEL for Setup," etc. When it does move on, all is functioning normally except for two things: The CD-RW/DVD drive is still nonfunctional & unrecognized in My Computer, and the constantly-blinking activity light at the front of the chassis is solidly lit, despite the seemingly optimal function of the HDD's. All the rest appear to be functioning normally as well (basically everything I clicked and accessed).

Here's a picture of the red cord and the 4 identical jacks: all of which yielded the same results above:

IMG705.jpg


One thing I should mention is that upon inspecting the cord and the jack (one which a series of pins laid out in two horizontal rows) directly behind the optical drive (in which the cord goes), I noticed one pin on the bottom row near the center of the row missing. Looking at the cord, I can see that there is a metal connector in the chamber where the jack has the pin missing. Is this optical drive jack supposed to never have an absent pin? If so, then I must've pulled it out when I removed the cord when the old PSU was taken out. Ultimately, am I correct in assuming that a damaged/missing pin at the back of an optical drive could give the symptoms above?

Thank you very much for your input.
 
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So are you saying when you boot up the computer that the drive activity light on the cdrom drive doesn't blink or anything? If not, then the drive isn't getting any power and probably you do have a missing power contact.
 
I don't remember noticing the CD-RW/DVD drive activity light going on at all. I'm quite sure the drive itself was completely off during this whole time. The light that was constantly lit which otherwise always blinks is the HDD activity light (not sure if that's what it's called, but basically blinks in correspondence with HDD activity). And I thought this was odd because the HDD was functioning normally and didn't understand how any optical drive feed would relay to that light. Upon starting up with this red cord disconnected, everything's back to normal. (BTW, I also tried plugging the red cord with the main AC cord disconnected prior to a bootup attempt; made no difference.)

I'm quite sure I've connected all the cords behind the CD drive properly. I mean, I made sure they were nice and snug. Pressing them into the jacks any harder would've been impractical... Although, I do remember the main cord (wide one with pin chambers) being tighter when I pulled it out the first them than it is now. Am I supposed to push on it with like 10 lbs of pressure? Anyhow, I there's gotta be contact already, because, otherwise, booting up the computer with the red cord plugged in wouldn't have been any different than when it was unplugged, but it did with the above symptoms...
 
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Have you ever tried to check the cord if it is malfunctioning or not? because if you connected the cords properly then there's something wrong to your cord. try to change it and observe.
 
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