Won't even read cd's- autostart fails...

What are the circumstances: Programs running, temperature of room, position of unit, surface sitting on, Sounds like it is overheating or ram is failing for starters. Got this off consumer reports:
By NatT96
from Los Angeles, CA
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)

2.0
Limited Performance (DO NOT BUY)
8/23/2013
Pros
Adequate Storage
Quality Accessories
Sleek Design
Cons
Ignored Boot Mgr Issue
Overheating
Poor customer support
Poor Graphics Card
Restarts Randomly
Unreliable Performance
Best Uses
Internet
Music
Video
Word Processing
Comment:
Got this PC as a gift. After two months of developing a large Android-based application project and playing high performing games on the computer, I have found out that the graphics card has already malfunctioned(Overheats), causing the PC to restart! Now get this, I called ASUS once and the person on the other line told me to back up a large hard drive to CD's.....seriously.The next day I called I told them that even Videos, Unity Pro, and Games on the PC simply restarted it over and over again. So what I was told is to by to a System recovery and go back in time on the computers main hard drive. Did not fix the restart issue.

> no option to let me select

This means that no "bootable" CD-ROM was loaded into the CD-drive, *AND* that the "bootable" files could *NOT* be read from the disk-drive.

> it show no hard-disk install

Well, it shows that either:
* no electrical power is reaching the disk-drive
* the electronics "underneath" the spinning-part of the disk-drive have failed
* the "spinning" part of the disk-drive is not spinning (dead motor?)
* the disk is spinning, but nothing can be read from the disk-drive.

Try connecting the disk-drive to another computer.
If it is detected, that's good.
If not, then your disk-drive has a BIG problem,
and replacing it (with or without exercising any "warranty'") is your only way to move forward.

I didn't understand the first sentence but if you can't even start windows 7 cd then there is a hardware issue (most likely not hdd unless it hangs when it is trying to detect the hard drive) as all the software is on the cd vs reading from the hard drive, if you get to the hard drive and 7 sees it but fails on install then hdd is bad, try finding something called bart pe it's a boot disk you can run windows off of the disk and test the hard drive using western digital diagnostics utility. even more rare you may have a dirty lens in the dvd-rom. there are alot of possiblities.

Try to format your hard drive using Maxtor CD not windows XP.
You may have a bad drive, see if you can write zeros to the drive it can fix a lots of problems.

Good luck
N Sabre

Some CDs do not autostart. it depends on how they are setup.
If you have a games CD and it doesn't autostart then click on My Computer and then the CD drive (your could be the D drive) and double click on the Setup or Install file. The program should then install on your computer.

This message would occur if you maybe have a floppy disk in the laptop that you have not pulled out. If you don't have a floppy disk loaded it is more than likely your hard drive failing. What the system is doing is trying to load up your o/s off of the harddrive and it can't access it. If you have your o/s cd and it is windows xp you can try running recovery console and running the command chkdsk c: /r . This will check your main drive for errors. Another option is to try and reload your o/s. It may just be a bad sector on your harddrive that your pc is trying to access.

how do i change from miles to kilometrs on my tomtom go 730 ?

i also have the same problem... i have k40in series loptop... i haven't uses it for a while but when the time i need to use it for formating my loptop. it wont read any cd's i insert, the tech guys told me to replace new one.. dvd/cd drive :(

try disabling legasy USB devices in bios

Sounds like the laser is burnt out. I would replace the drive.