CD/DVD or CD/DVD/BD have the tendency to loose the ability to burn and read CD's first the unit stops burning them and sometime later it may stop reading while the other formats continue to work, I keep an old CD only drive handy.
I don't know of any BIOS settings that could cause a problem to a drive like this.
There has been a virus that could update the BIOS and cause this behaviour, it even infected mac users, though I have not heard of this in Linux.
Use Unetbootin to make bootable Flash drives.
If you have a desktop a replacement drive is cheap, or use an external USB adapter to see if the drive works, open the case and check all connections, also, with the machine powered down and unplugged from the wall, if a laptop remove the battery and press the on button for 30 seconds.