Optical drive not being seen. NO Operating System!

I am attempting to recover the factory image on a dv9000. However, the optical drive is not being detected and even though I have it set 1st in the boot order in the BIOS, it is not being seen when I try to boot in this configuration. When booting up it is only seeing the HDD because I get the dreaded "Boot Mgr is Missing" message. The optical drive is getting power as the activity LED lights/blinks and I can hear it spin initially!?

When I press F9 on startup the boot menu only gives me the HDD as an option! As previously stated, I can set the boot order for the optical drive as 1st boot device but it will not boot from the optical drive and I still get the "Boot Mgr is Missing" message.

I was wondering if it would be possible for the optical drive to receive power but not communicate or be seen; transfer data from media if the pc board interface is bad? Or, would it more likely be an issue with the motherboard.

Initially, before attempting the recovery, the optical drive would not show up in "My Computer". The only thing that was displayed was the C: drive! So if the CD/DVD drive is displayed in the BIOS for a boot option, is the BIOS recognizing it or what? If it is, why isn't it available as an option on the boot menu on start up!?

Hopefully, there is someone out there that can give me some clarification for understanding this problem .

Any comments would be immensely appreciated.

Thanks

Does it show up in BIOS as a drive? I suppose it's just possible it could show in the Boot Options list even if it isn't present.

If it doesn't, locate the screw underneath and take it out it then withdraw the unit and push it back in quite firmly. If that doesn't connect it properly, buy a cheap USB external CD/DVD ROM to handle the factory reset and worry about the built-in unit afterwards.