Comp not accepting Optical drive

[digitaloracle]

I have a very knowledgable friend who is having a problem with his desktop. It will not accept a cd drive, no matter what he does. So far, none of these fixes have worked:
Checked all cables and connections
tried all jumper settings,
pulled hdd and tried it
tried multiple drives, an old CD, a DVD, a CD-RW
cleared CMOS

He has an asus something (A7-8NX, he thinks). It was working perfectly for years before. Any ideas?

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Try the CD Drive on a seperate IDE host, and make sure the 12 volt rail is within 5%