a few days ago windows stopped recognizing my cd rom drive. i figured since i really skimped on it when i bought it a couple years ago chances are its not working any more...since it was time for an upgrade anyway i just went out and bought a lite-on cd/rw dvd rom combo drive. after installing it and turning it on windows notified me that it had found new hardware and yet when i go to my computer or try to load something from cd rom nothing happens and the drive is not in my computer. is it possible i just need to look for some software drivers on the website or is it something else? also i recently installed sp 2 for xp...could this be an issue?

//update
i uninstalled and reinstalled the hardware using the device manager and i am getting this error "Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)"

There are some peeps having issues with SP2 for XP but possibly a repair install would help. With the drive connected at the time you performed it should repair the registry and/or drivers.

But first, does it show up in BIOS? I Googled a bit and it appears to be a registry problem so the repair install should take care of it.