A very odd laptop hardware problem

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I need some suggestions for a hardware problem involving a two/three years old customs build laptop running XP and with a AMI bios.

When the laptop is cold on bootup the bios seem to be looking at the CD/DVD drive IE a cd/dvd access light blinks and it sound like it is trying to access the cd drive for around five/ten minutes before it is will go on to the normal boot screen and then go to windows.

When it is warm this does not happen only when it been off for fifteen minutes or so.

I had play with the bios and disable both the cd/dvd controller and the hard drive controller on the mother board by way of the bios and it still take the same time with the dvd/cd access light blinking on for the bios screen to appear.

I also ran spinrite on the hard drive and that program found zero errors and the bio boot up screen will not appear even when I tell it to boot just to the cd/rom or for that matter after taking always all boot devices it still look at the cd/dvd drive and before it will come up and complain that I did not give it a boot device.

One other comment if I place it in standby mode even when it is cold it come back up fine.

Any ideas?

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Can you remove and re-seat the CD drive?

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@DrewDad,

Drewdad I had it open enough to replug the cd drive cable in however I hate and I mean hate taking even a large laptop apart but I am reaching the point where that might be the only course of action open to me. They have the hard drive bury under the cd drive for example and I do not even see how you are suppose to remove it!

Thank god this is my large laptop and not my netbook.

Oh well a can of freezes and my wife hair driver and being very careful so hopefully I can get it all back together again seem to be in my future that or taking it back to it builder and paying for the repair.

As my eyesight and hand/eye movements get worst the electronic get smaller and smaller.

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@BillRM,

How often do you actually use the CD drive? Disable it in BIOS. Maybe get an external drive?

Is this a brand-name computer? Check the manufacturer for BIOS and firmware updates.

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@DrewDad,

DrewDad after removing the cd/dvd from the boot list my next step was disabling the dvd/cd controller on the main board by way of the bios and then for good measure I disable the hard drive controller and both actions resulted in no change of behavior.

It took the same length of time to boot to the bios screen with the same actions that seem to relate to the cd/dvd drive and then complained to me that it did not have a mean to boot.

I would had been happy to use a usb dvd/cd drive that I already have if disabling the cd/dvd would take care of the problem it did not however!

I did say this is an odd problem did I not?

This is not a name brand computer it was put together a number of years ago in a small shop using an older computer/dvd player of some kind as a shell.

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@BillRM,

Disconnect the power from it then. It sounds to me like the drive is experiencing some kind of problem initializing.

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@DrewDad,

That is going to be my next step and thank for the input I will let you know if that take care of the problem or not.

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A very odd laptop hardware problem

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