Optical drives not recognised anymore

[Oldie]

I am running XP HE SP2.

My DVD-RW and CD-ROM drives do not appear in my computer, nor are they
listed under 'disk management'.

If I could briefly explain - I had 2 versions of CD/DVD burning software
installed. During installation, the later version detected the previous
version, and stated if I wanted to keep this, the newer one would work fine
alongside the previous one. I opted to retain it, as I liked some elements
within it.

I found that the previous version didn't seem to work as it did; therefore I
uninstalled it; when I used the later program, I wasn't too impressed, so I
also uninstalled that. I then reinstalled the previous version - it didn't
function correctly and hung. So I then thought I'd use system restore to go
back to before either installation; I chose a restore point, and after a
time, I got the response that 'system restore could not restore your
computer, etc..". Upon Windows starting up, in my computer, both my optical
drives have disappeared. In the device manager, they appear with an
exclamation mark against them, so I uninstalled them, rebooted, but to no
avail.

What's happened? How do I get them back?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

See if this helps:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm

Under section 8 - Problems - there is a link to a patch that often resolves
this problem

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org