Laptop CD drive not detected

this is a problem i'm hleping my bro with. i dontk now all the details so i need general advice. he is trying to get a work friend's laptop to use/detect his CD drive. i told my bro to go into bios and see if the laptop would detect it. i aslo said to get firmware and bios updates. i think my bro said his friend put the drive in a different laptop and it worked.

Well we know the drive works (but that doesnt say the interface on your brother's laptop works or not) so theres a quick checklist

• BIOS detect the drive?
  • Check that the IDE channel is enabled
  • Check the there isnt physical damage to the connectors
• Windows detect the drive?
  • Try a Device Manager "detect"
  • Laptops usually have some utility from the OEM that lets them "manage" the laptop, use this (or device manager really) to disable the CD drives and then renable them
• Drive useable?
  • Flash to the latest firmware (find out the make and model of the drive

Try updating drivers and maybe try unistalling it and reinstalling it in the hardware manager.

a laptop? you must have made a power setting that saves battery life by shutting off the optical drive!, so when its not in use, it shuts it off to save power! try under the power options in control panel to find a setting that will get rid of this if you dont like it.

I think "must have made" is a bit strong...