waybrane

i guess the only reason i don't think it might be a hardware problem is when i try to use the cdrom that the light just flickers like its trying to read like crazy..........i'm trying to exhaust all options for the moment....my friend has some real health issue's, his back is real bad and his economics are very limited, so i'm trying to help him out........sorry to be such a pain........

i noticed on recent post a person asked if there was a quick fix and i just realized that i did try to system restore and no luck, and then i thought i had remembered that if u place the windows xp disk in at reboot, that there was an option to repair rather than reformat, but if u can't get cdrom to read, which is the case for his computer, what then, not sure if we are talking hardware rather than software, hmmmmmm, now i am confused??????

the system was custom built, and i assume we are talking about F1/esc on the reboot, ok, am i to assume there is no easy way to load commands for windows part of this problem, it doesn't seem to be the actual driver, i redownloaded the driver for the cd-rw/dvd combo drive.

this was an original install, there were no additions or adjustments, i believe its due to wear and tear.........but still have 3.5 floppy drive, thought maybe still might be able to add neccesary files.....?????? so there was no need to change slave/master situation.............when reboot, i tried to F8, and go into bios, but that command did not result in anything.........maybe there is another F key that i should use?

well, i have friend who has no cd drive recongized........he's running windows xp, its a combo drive samsug sm308b, and we have tried downloading the correct driver and still to no avail. what would be the best way to solve this without a reformat?