Sony DVD DRU-800A Problem

[Deadshot]

I have a Sony DVD DRU-800A drive that I have for about a year which has worked wonderfully until yesterday. I attempted to burn a dvd of converted avi's and the program was no longer recognizing my drive.

I checked the device manager and the drive had the dreaded yellow exclamation mark. So, I attempted to update the driver from the Sony site and its telling me that it isn't detecting that drive at all.

My next step was to uninstall the drive and then try to add new hardware. The computer found the drive and installed it but it still has the yellow exclamation mark.

I tried to do a system restore back to the last restore available in case that caused the problem and I just didn't see it. Restore worked fine but it did not solve the drive issue.

HELP! :(

[ski]

Connect a different power lead to the drive.
If no luck, then install a different known working IDE cable.
If no good, then connect the drive to the primary channel as Slave if it's currently on the secondary channel, or connect it to the secondary channel if it's currently on the primary channel.
If no luck, then see if it works on another system.
If not, then it's probably bad.