Dvd-Rom is recognized by bios, but not windows

Had you try to remove the Jumpers
Also change its IDE cable (it it IDE one).

Yes, I've tried both of those.

try running only CDRom and one hard disk and remove the jumpers from both if you had
also, try running that CDROM on other computer

Also recheck the wiring.

Can you boot from the DVDrom ?

Could be a corrupted registry somewhere.


I hope this helps !

Yeah I can boot from the CDrom, and it works fine in my other computer.

Right click My Computer and select Manage.
Got to Storage> Disk Management.
Is the drive listed here?
If yes does it have a drive letter assigned?
If no then right click and select Change Drive Letter and Paths and assign a letter to it.

The drive isn't listed in that section.

This is a long shot but can you open the DVD tray?
If not it may not be getting enough power.
Try another power cable from the PSU if you have a free one.

Of course, I even have a cd in it now. When you put a cd in the led lights up and nothing else happens. I don't know if I mentioned it in the original question, but I was able to perform another repair install of xp since it can boot from it. (I figured something went wrong the first time I guess)

Have you tried running a reg cleaner such as RegCure? (www.RegCure.com)

If that doesn't help try a fresh install rather than just a repair. I would use a different HDD in case it doesn't fix the issue.

I ran it, restarted, and still no dvd-rom drive. I'm pretty certain a fresh install would fix the problem but my goal is to fix it without doing that.

Also, run this:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip

Also, try uninstalling any CD burning programs you have such as Nero and Roxio.

Ran that cdgone reg file and uninstalled Nero then restarted but no dice.

Have you checked your event viewer?

Hi Scythy,
Not sure if this will really help...  I had a similiar issue with a HP laptop a little while back.  These are the steps I took to fix the issue.

- At first the drive wouldn't show up at all in windows.  Performed an OS repair.

- CD/DVD drive would only show up under device manager with status "Software installed, but unable to detect hardware".

- Tried updating all drivers... windows was able to update all drivers, but did not fix the issue.

- Tried to remove the drive to check for physical defects... Was unable to remove the drive. In order to remove that drive, I would need to take the pc apart.

- Found a registry fix for this issue on the hp support site (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00817052&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN) - refer to Step 3 of this tutorial.

- The drive finally started showing up under "My Computer", but when I tried to use RecordNow to create a CD, I received the following error "No compatible Recordable or Rewritable devices could be found on you system".

- Uninstalled the RecordNow software.

- Tried pulling up the pre-installed software on HP's support site but nothing was available.

- Installed an old copy of nero and everything was good to go.

Hope this helps

The event viewer says nothing regarding any devices, and the DVD drive isn't even in the device manager and I can't get it to appear so I can update the drivers.

After repair re-install, have you installed chipset driver for the system? If not, please do so.

Have you tried the drive in another computer?

Scythy did mention it worked fine in his other PC (5th comment from top).

Oh, sorry! Thanks Rartemass. Wow this is a tough one.

Hmm, that's strange. Wouldn't those drivers have been installed automatically? Anyway, thanks for the solution.

It's probably because I didn't slipstream any updates, I just repair installed and used windows update.

Good job Scythy...
It's very weird that the repair didn't reload those drivers for you.  Anyway, it works now.  Thanks for the update.

Good work.