I recently reformatted an Acer laptop of mine, and when I try to run Nero on it, it no longer detects my CDRW/DVD-ROM combo drive as it did prior to then.

I used my Acer restore CDs to reformat, and the version of Nero is the OEM one that was packaged with the laptop and supposedly is only intended to work for the specific drive it was packaged with, which is still the one I'm using. I'm guessing that for some reason, it simply doesn't recognize it as the drive it's intended to work for.

I know the computer itself is detecting the drive, and afterwards I installed a different writing program and it detected the drive and could write to it, so I'm guessing the problem is as I said, and at Nero's end...

Has anyone else dealt with this before, or have any idea how to solve it?

"I installed a different writing program "
I suspect that's the cause of your problem.
I believe both nero and that program, during their installation, modify some Windows system files to slightly different versions that allow them to do their work.
If you re-run Windows setup, then it would put back the Windows file versions and Nero would no longer work, so Nero would need to be un-installed then re-installed to put back the Nero version. Similarly if you install a different prog to Nero you'd need to uninstall that so the nero file versions are restored.
Keeping a backup of a working system of software [the C; partition] is the ideal.
What you have is your Acer restore CD.
I assume that the backup it restores is held on a partition other than C: somewhere on your HDD?

I installed the other writing program AFTER noticing that Nero wasn't working, so that wasn't what caused the conflict.

There is a D: partition labeled ACERDATA, but I'm not entirely sure what it contains, possibly restore/backup data.

I'm still not sure what caused the conflict to begin with... all I did was use the Acer setup CDs to restore the laptop to what seemed to be factory condition, with Windows, all the proper drivers, etc installed, and then Nero.

Have you got another CD provided by Acer other than the restore CD? eg drivers. If yes, install the stuffs there.
When you restore from the CD, you have nero installed already or you are provided with an extra nero Cd, and you install with it later?

Remove the CD-RW from the device manager, reboot and then try running nero? Does it detect the drive now?

When you say it no longer detects the drive, you mean nero doesn't show the cd writer in the recorder list or something else?

From what I can find, I have the recovery disks along with the system CD, which doesn't seem to help. The system CD contains drivers, but nothing relevant whatsoever, just drivers for other things, from what it says.

The copy of Nero is on a separate CD, installed separately.
The other writing program to which I referred is also an OEM version, evcept it actually works. Granted, it's buggy, has few features, and did some odd things when I tried to burn a CDR with it, but the point is that one can detect and write to the CDRW drive and Nero can't. That program is CD Maker Plus, apparently made by NTI, and it also carries the Acer logo.

And yes, I meant that Nero doesn't display it as an available recorder, it does know the drive exists, but only for reading purposes and such, my apologies if I wasn't clear.

Uninstalling the drive in Device Manager and then rebooting ends up with it having what appear to be the same drivers as before right off the bat, and running Nero still doesn't list it as a recorder.

Ok, for now, uninstall the nero software completely.
I mean first uninstall it thru the control panel-add/remove programs.
And then remove the "Ahead" folder from the "Program Files" folder.
Also remove the "Ahead" folder from the "Program Files\Common Files" folder.
Run "regedit"
and navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE" and then remove the entry named "Ahead".
and navigate "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE" and then remove the entry named "Ahead".
Delete you temporary files.
Reboot and re-install Nero. See if it recognizes the recorder now.

And Oh, you may see "Nero" Instead of "Ahead" but the thing to do is the same.

I tried that, and nothing really changed, then I figured that having the NTI program still installed might be messing with something, so I did it again, uninstalling that program as well, and removed both that and Nero from the registry and Program Files folder before rebooting, and deleted my temporary files again.. After rebooting, I again installed Nero, and with no positive results.

Perhaps you should contact Acer support and ask them to help.

You could try running "Registry Monitor" to record registry accesses at the critical point where Nero would attempt to detect the CD-drive. You'd be looking for Nero [or some prog acting for Nero] trying to retrieve a value that confirms that it's ok to go ahead and use this CD-drive. Perhaps Nero has been altered to look for this and refuse to function if not found.
It might also be a file access. A setting stored in a file. In which case you could use "File Monitor" to record those.

Easier to ask Acer though.

Sorry I cannot quickly give you the web address for the above, but I'm right in the middle of moving to a newer PC and I'm working on the new one at the moment.

I just emailed Acer support about it yesterday... here's hoping I actually get a response!

I hope you get a more useful response than the one I got a few hours back from ViPowER dot com.
They are Korean, so perhaps there are language difficulties.
Their booklet says I must run "Stepup.exe" [should that be Setup.exe? There isn't a single Stepup.exe on their CD, but there are about 100 Setup.exe and they don't say which one to run.]
I sent them an email and got a response that was like a dialogue with the deaf. Or was that a computer reponding?

Best of luck. :D