CDROM randomly not being detected

ok... heres how it goes... i download Knoppix... the newest english ISO i could find and i burn it...

i pop it in and create a boot disk and then slam both in my computer to start up after i just formatted my machine.

well it starts up great, im right into KDE and really eager to install it permantly and start playing more.

so i bring up the root console and type in the HDinstall line and it starts goin... when i go to initiate my swap space (i designated about 512 megs) it had a weird error and froze... i had to hit the restart button..

Ive formatted about like 30 times fhack and its taking forever... now whenever i run Knoppix it goes to the boot screen off my boot disk and i type in knoppix and then it goes to the next screen (with the penguin in the corner) and it scans all avalible drives for a knoppix CD... well, it doesnt find one at all and "dropping you into a (very limited) shell, push restart to quit" appears all in red along with how it cant detect my CD...

so i go into my CMOS and check out the settings... well i go to my basic settings and see my CDRom drive set as the secondary master drive... sounds good to me... so i go to it and hit auto detect and it says its fine... i try that again a few times and it has this seizure and says "not installed"

what do you mean "Not installed... i JUST saw you say CDrom!!!" well it remains not installed for about 2 minuites then when i hit auto detect it went back to normal.... this is distressing because im assuming while its searching for the files on the CD its spazzing out and becoming "not installed!"

this isnt the first time... it did that with 2 copies of the german CD previously so i burned a new english one.

help?! why might it be doing this

Sounds like a hardware issue. Check the cables, maybe try a different CDROM drive.