Zzeaks,
Actually yes. When you said the cd-rom was "missing", you meant missing in WINDOWS. Vital information indeed. Perhaps I should have picked up on that...I actually thought you has posted a fake.
Ok, there could be several reasons. For this problem. The first thing I would do is check the cable connections for power and IDE inside the computer. If that doesn't fix the problem, I would re-install the cd-rom drivers, which I would download from the cd-rom OEM's website.
If you don't feel comfortable opening your computer by yourself, just try downloading and installing the drivers from the cd-rom website. If that doesn't work, you may have to find someone to open the computer for you to check the connections.
J_