BIOS no longer detects either CD or DVD burner.

[Missteek]

Hello, I have an ASUS P5K-V mainboard with an AMI BIOS running WinXP Pro with SP3.  Everything was working fine until the other day when I opened it up and blew out all the dust.  After I was done I noticed that I had forgotten to plug the SATA DVD burner back in, which I had unplugged for easier access to one of the fans I was cleaning.  So I opened it back up and plugged it back in.  After booting back up I put a blank DVD in the burner, which seemed okay because it had power but upon checking in "my computer" I noticed it was not being detected.  And to make matters worse, now my IDE CD burner was no longer there either!   And it was working fine before and I didnt even touch it when I plugged the DVD burner back in.  So I went into my BIOS and tried to have it auto detect it, but it wont.  And I noticed that during boot process when the messages flash across black screens before windows loads, there was something strange.  It was under the usual Maxtor HDD0 list; I think it was referring to my cdrom, but it read ODD0: !!OAY some weird characters and C with a vertical double pointed arrow X230E and what looks like a club from a suit of cards.  I dont remember seeing this before.  Does anyone know what I can do to make my BIOS recognize these drives again?
Thank you,
 Linda

[Computer_Commando]

You blew some dust inside the SATA receptacle on the motherboard.

[Missteek]

But I never unplugged anything from the motherboard, just from the burner itself.  After I nplugged it back in, I got power to it, but it isnt recognized in the bios any more, and after plugging it back in my other IDE burner doesnt show up either!  And what are those strange characters and symbols that show up during boot screens?

[Computer_Commando]

I had a SATA hard drive do something similar.  It's not making a good connection at the drive.  Cut a little paper tab (a cut up plastic Post-It page marker works perfectly) to tighten up the connection between the gold tabs.

[Missteek]

Thanks for the good tip that I will not forget, but unfortunately that doesnt seem to be the problem here.  However, after doing your suggestion the other IDE CD burner has started working again and the BIOS summary is legible and no longer shows those strange characters.  And I didnt touch this IDE drive, only the SATA one, which still isnt recognized.  Do you think it could be my motherboard?  Maybe I will remove the SATA plug from its current spot #3 and move it to #4 on the board to see if that makes any difference.

[Missteek]

Well it looks like it is my board, cause I switched the SATA plug to the #4 spot and it works just fine.  I guess I better start looking for another board.

[quaxo]

Try blowing out the old port and plugging it back it. Bet it will work again.