cd-rom problems

[dkjr47]

I have windows xp, and my cd-rom drive, and dvd drives do
not read. The problem is not the drives themselves, I
know this because I have replaced them and gone as far as
getting and external cd-rom drive. When I install the
drives windows reconizes it and tries to install it but
it says "Windows cannot load this device driver for this
hardware, the driver maybe corrupt or missing (code 39.)
I also can see the drives on the device manager but they
just have a yellow ball with an (!) next to them. Can
anyone help.

 

[Dr Evil]

I've had the same problems - try this: disconnect your
drives, restart and then turn off, reconnect drives -
pause the boot sequence to see if mobo recognises them.
If you then get to XP and your drive still isn't
recognised then XP has "lost" the ability to identify the
drive.

Use a restore point to last known when it did recognise.
If your installation is about 12 months old you could
probably do with re-installing XP that should sort it.