My laptop can recognize and install the hardware necessary for the CD-ROM drive as well as an external DVD-drive. But these drives do not appear in "My Computer" although they are visible in the device manager.

Which Operating System please and are there any yellow exclamation marks or question marks in Device Manager.

If you are running Win9X it could be a MS-DOS Compatibility Mode Problem (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=151911)

Hi, I am using Win 2K Professional - There is no exclaimation in the 2 drives but I do have an unrecognized PCI simple communication controller.

Thanks for your help
Debasish


Which Operating System please and are there any yellow exclamation marks or question marks in Device Manager.

If you are running Win9X it could be a MS-DOS Compatibility Mode Problem (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=151911)

Its never good munga if there are problems with any hardware. The unrecognized PCI simple communication controller is often an incorrectly installed modem.

Do the drives show up in Disk Management? RClick MyComputer>> Manage >> Storage >> Disk Management.

No it does not appear in the disk management either. It could it be a corrupt driver. I tried a couple of usb cd-rom drives and they do not work either.

Try booting into safe mode and removing all the references to cdrom drives from device manager and reboot to let the hardware reinstall the drives.

Only other things I can think of right now are (1) to do a repair installation from the installation cd. Boot to the CD, choose new installation, wait till it copies files. It should then detect the current installation and allow you to choose to repair it. Dont use the recovery console repair option, which appears early on and possibly (2) try tweakui to see if it can hide/show the drives.

Today it is working normally - I dont know how it happened but it is up and running by itself. Thanks for your help.