[TippeX]

nowadays bios destroying viruses (although technically possible) are very very rare, and very chipset/bios dependant...

cd/dvd drivers can also 'fail' due to messed up filter drivers, and sometimes using nforce chipset drivers instead of the microsoft ones etc can cause problems, its all very very hardware dependant...

if you buy a cheap cd/dvd drive, i think the rule is 'if its cheap, it will die sometime in the future' , as thats the nature of cheap hardware... you really do pay for what you get (in most cases)...