Your computer should restart automatically. Make sure your CD or USB drive is in your computer. If you’re prompted to “Press any key to boot from external device,” do so.

A mail-order house called Tenex (800-776-6781) has an internal CD-ROM player (it fits in a disk drive bay inside your computer) for $199 and an external model that looks exactly like the DAK for $289.

Windows doesn’t recognize DVD or can't find DVD/CD drive? If your CD/DVD drive is not detected, showing, reading, working, or will not read/write media on Windows PC, then see this.

Insert a writable CD into your CD/DVD drive and click "Create disc." Click "Close" and "OK." Reboot your computer, and tap the appropriate key to bring up your boot menu.

QUESTION: My computer does not recognize my CD drive. It stopped doing this so I thought the CD player was just shot. I put in a new one and got the same result. I switched IDE cables, same result.

To do this, bring your physical CD and external drive to a public computer, insert the disc, and plug in the external drive. The application to extract audio files will depend on the computer’s ...

Booting from your USB drive will take a few extra steps over the live CD method. While your computer is probably set to check your CD drive for bootable discs, it probably isn't set to check your ...

If your computer did not come with a recovery CD, Windows 7 allows you to create one with a blank CD or DVD. Create a System Repair Disc Insert a blank CD or DVD into your computer's disc drive.

Depending on the speed of your CD drive and computer, ripping a typical CD should take less than 10 minutes. Windows users can also use iTunes, following the instructions at ...

You can connect an external optical drive to your computer via USB. External drives are so inexpensive — you can routinely find CD/DVD drives online for $25 or less — that it might make sense ...

Help, I'm stumped! I just bought a new CD and the disc is labeled "Enhanced CD". When I insert it into my computer's CD drive, it opens up the music video of the feature song on the CD but none of ...

Luckily, you don’t need an internal optical drive to rip a CD: External DVD drives that connect to your computer via USB, go for as little as $23, and will easily do the job without you having ...