New PC will not boot from CD

[JimR]

Sweet new PC and when I turn it on the CD will not work?! I have an ASRock Z77 Pro3 board, a Samsung SH-222BB CD and a Vertex Agility3 SSD and I get in to the bios and see everything exactly as I would expect. So I've done this ...
> set the boot order to be CD first and SSD second
> confirmed everything is seen/identified
> verified the sata ports are set to ACHI

I turn on the PC and the screen reads: reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key

I push the button on the front of the CD and the try will not open. Initially I got a light on the front (LED) but not now. So far I have ...

1) shut down the PC, opened the drive with a paperclip, put in the Win7 disk and turned on the PC ... drive wont close even if I push the button ... disk won't load even if I hit enter

2) repeat step 1 but while the pc is off close the CD tray ... same result

3) tried every SATA connection from the PSU ... two cables with two connectors each ... each time I change the connections I verified the drives appear correctly in bios

4) swapped the SATA data cable with the drives ... no difference

5) tried all 4 SATA connections on the mobo ... no difference

6) tried another drive (an HP DVD 1260) ... no difference

I'm so far out of ideas I don't have a clue! I would appreciate any idea on how to get the CD working so I can load Win7 on this box.

[ASRock TSD - Emily]

Dear JimR,

Please kindly refer to below suggestions for testing.
1. Re-plug the SATA ODD and check whether it is installed correctly.
2. When booting system, please press "F11" to boot menu and then choose booting from ODD to try.
3. If possible, please change another Windows 7 installation disc for testing.

Thanks!

Have a nice day
ASRock TSD
Emily

[JimR]

Dear JimR,

Please kindly refer to below suggestions for testing.
1. Re-plug the SATA ODD and check whether it is installed correctly.
2. When booting system, please press "F11" to boot menu and then choose booting from ODD to try.
3. If possible, please change another Windows 7 installation disc for testing.

Thanks!

Have a nice day
ASRock TSD
Emily

1) I have tried all the combinations of SATA ports (the board has four) and cables (one SATA and one SATA3). Each combination results in the drive being identified in the BIOS ... but it doesn't seem to matter.

2) That leads me back to the message that I need to load media and press enter ... so both the boot order and manual intervention get me to the same place

3) I don't have another Win7 CD ... these things cost as much as the mobo!!!

Question ... would connecting the drive to the SATA3 ports on the mobo work? I'm assuming if I get the OS loaded I should be good to go?

[Babdi]

Yes it should work. I have it connected to SATA 3 port and IMO your CD/DVD drive comes with SATA 3

[parsec]

I think your optical drive is broken, if you had to open the tray manually, and you did not see an activity light on it. If the system is asking for media to read, as if it was empty, that tells me there is no signal coming from that drive. After changing all the data connections as you did, you should check the power connection to that optical drive, but if that makes no difference, it is probably bad. Fortunately a new optical drive can be had for ~$20.

All optical drives operate at SATA 1.5Gb/s (SATA I) speeds, and of course are never as fast as that. You don't need a SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III) connection in order for it to work. Your boot drive should be on the SATA III ports, and best on the first one, labeled either 0 or 1.

[JimR]

I would assume the odds of getting a bad drive are small. I went and bought a different brand of drive and it behaved exactly the same way. I did get win7 loaded from a usb drive using the win7 cd so that rules out the win7 cd being the issue. Now that I whave win7 on the box the drive still does not open with the button and it doesn't eject from win7 either.

I have a few nmore options to explore but I'm starting to think the mobo is an issue ... specifically the SATA ports. Is there something in bios that could be set wrong? The drive is reconized by win7 and everything appears to be good to go?!

[parsec]

This is an intriguing issue, I'd like to figure it out. I imagine you can see how I thought the first ODD was broken, if the tray would not open on its own, and its activity LED was off. But if a second ODD does the same thing, that is very odd.

What SATA mode and driver do you use on the Intel Z77 chipset? I think I recall a new feature on either the chipset or driver, that reduces or shuts off power to ODDs when they are idle. I need to check on that, but perhaps it's not working right.

Is Hot Plugging enabled on that ODD? I leave mine like that and its OK.

What about Aggressive SATA Link Power Management, if you have that in your UEFI/BIOS? I've set that to disabled from day 1 of using my ASR board, since that might not work well with SSDs. Are you using any other power saving features?

If the ODD and other drives are recognized, then the SATA ports should be fine.

For a test, have the ODD connected to power, but not connected to the board via its SATA cable. Start the PC, and when it boots, or just in the BIOS, try to open the tray and see what happens.

[soundesciple]

Now you have windows installed have you ran the troubleshooter for the optical drive?

[JimR]

Now you have windows installed have you ran the troubleshooter for the optical drive?

Win7 tells me there is nothing wrong with the drive. I bought a new ASUS drive (1000+ happy users can't be wrong) abd it behaves exactly the same way.

When I'm looking at Device Manager I see a section labeled Other Devices and there are five things listed, all of them have a yellow icon (exclaimation point) ... they are:
> Ethernet Controller
> PCI Simple Communications Controller
> SM Bus Controller
> Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller
> Unknown Device


Deleting and looking for new hardware doesn't change this. Maybe this is why the drive won't run?!

[parsec]

You are missing drivers and the Intel Management Engine (IME), because you can't use your ODD to load them from the disk that came with your board. Is that PC able to connect to the Internet? Did you use it to start this thread? I say this because it looks like your Ethernet Controller is not working, given the list of problems found in Device Manager.

My Z77 EX4 board, with the Broadcom network chip, did not work until I loaded its driver, so Windows 7 does not have a driver for it. You should see the Network icon in the lower right corner of the Windows desktop, it looks like a monitor. If it has a red X on it, your network connection is not working. Click on it to see its status.

Those things may be related to your ODD not working, but that is not certain. My ODD worked fine to install Windows 7, and none of those devices and their drivers were functioning when I did that.

How is the ODD connected to your case, with screws or built in latches that some cases have? I wonder if a screw or something is doing something to it. I would try removing any screws you have holding it in place, and release the case latches if they exist. The ODD won't fall out, just let it float in the bay slot.

That is just so weird...