CD Drive problem

I need an explanation more than a solution. Bought a junk HP pavilion and got it up and running but one of the cd drives is bad. If it is powered up during the boot process, it changes my bios. I believe this is what toasted the original motherboard. The cd drive changes to Floppy Diskette A and runs as a 1.44 MB 3.5. floppy (?). Anyone have an idea of what's going on to make this happen?:confused

 

Sounds like the the CDROM's circuit board is malfunctioning and reporting it as another device! You could also try unplugging the floppy drive ribbon cable to the motherboard, if the computer has one. Could also check in BIOS and disable the floppy drive temperorarily to see if it helps!

 

Thanks for the input. That is the problem with my bios. I disable it and then I boot with the power hooked in to the cd drive the drive change right back to enabled. I have 2 cd drives and the other works fine. If I leave the drive powered up and try to boot all I get is an improper boot device error. Looks like I'm off to ebay to put in another order for a cd drive replacement.