A 2 year old HP CD/RW burner is very flakey 90% of the time it is not seen by Roxio burning software, on occasion it is ???.

Windows calls it a CD/RW but there is not a tab in properities for recording.

Does HP have software that has to be installed to make this burner work all the time---or is the burner shot???

Ive installed a new IDE cable and all connections are secure on the mobo

Thanks Paul

Connect a different power lead to the drive.

If no luck, then remove all optical drives from Device Manager in Safe mode, shut down the computer, disconnect all optical drives except the CD-RW drive, restart, let Windows recognize it and reinstall its drivers.

If no good, then connect it to a different IDE channel.

If that does not work, then uninstall and reinstall the Roxio software, and check its site for any updates/patches.

If none of the above works, then the drive may be failing. Try it on another computer. If the same thing happens, then it may have to be replaced.

Does Windows recognise it all the time? Another possibility (I'd go through ski's instructions first) is to boot up and enter the bios, and choose 'autodetect hard disk drives', save the settings and exit, then reboot.
It's usually a good idea to follow the routine ski laid out- remove the device in safe mode, remove the offending software, and go through the installation procedure again. Sometimes Windows sulks if things aren't done in the right order.