I have an HP Pavilion 555E AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 1.80 ghz 512 mb ram. It is about 2-3 years old. The CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives do not work. The DVD-ROM spins but that is all. The device manager does have them listed. They are: CD-RW Sony CRX 215E5 and DVD-ROM JLMS XJ-HD 166S.

I took the back off of the pc and it looks like everything is plugged in okay. Nothing appeared to be loose. I wanted to find out if there is anything I can do before I shell out money for new drives, even though they are relatively inexpensive. Thank you for any help you can give. :confused:

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Did they both go out at the same time? If so it sounds like the IDE cable connecting both drives has worked partially loose from the motherboard. Try re-seating the IDE cables on both the mobo and the drives. Even if they look good it doesn't mean they didn't creep a little.

I know it can be a pain in the butt getting a CD/DVD drive out of an HP case, but if the above doesn't work the best way would be to take them out and try them in another system. You will have to take them out to replace them anyway. Or try a known good one in that system.

Actually unless your budget is really tight it isn't a bad idea to have an extra CD drive sitting around for backup and testing anyway.

Thanks for your prompt response! I'll give that a try.

Thank for your help. I was able to install new cd and dvd drives thanks to your help and hp and newegg.