The Hidden Forest

Hi guys. I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out an issue with my PC and maybe one of you can help.


While running WinXP, suddenly my computer could no longer see anything in my CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. It recognizes both drives but not the disc in them.

When I installed Win7, I still had the same problem.

I've since gone back to WinXP and now my computer can see things in the CD-ROM but not the DVD-ROM. It still recognizes the DVD-ROM but not any disc in it.

I've researched online until I'm blue in the face. None of the solutions they offer have fixed the issue.

Any ideas on what the problem might be?

The last thing I installed before this happened was Norton Internet Security.
The installs of both Win7 and WinXP were done after a quick reformat.


Thanks in advance for any ideas.


EDIT: The CD-ROM is IDE and the DVD-ROM is SATA.

Check the bios?
Is the drive really old or newish?
Might be driver but doubt it these days.
Possible the sata port on the mb. I use sata1 for hd sata2 for dvd sata3 for burner and no issues.
Still shouldn't be the issue but you never know. Sometimes its picky about which you use.
Why come you not on vent tonight, we had fun times but missed making fun of you.

Bios checked.
The drives are 2 years old. Same as the mobo, cpu, ram and hdd.
HDD is on sata1 and DVD is on sata2.

I didn't get on vent tonight because I had the music cranking. =)


I had to load Win7 and WinXP from a thumbdrive. Talk about a pain in the tooshie!
I'd really love to figure this out. I wanna watch my American DVDs. The entertainment system is of course from England and region coded. =(

Have you tried swapping which sata port the hd and the dvd are in?

I had a issue on vista like this that I could never fix. Burn backup cd and it wouldn't show any data but 7 can read it. So annoying. Either post or pm the full specs, make model of all parts and when I get home in 4 hours or when you post ill see if I can help but you know me, goofy and stoopid.

Mobo - MSI K9N6GM
CPU - AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.21 GHz
2 gig ram
Lite On DVD burner
Sony DVD ROM

While the Sony (IDE) reads CDs, it doesn't read DVDs.
The Lite On (SATA) doesn't read either.

oh and I changed HDDs as well because of issues with the SATA HDD not allowing me to load Windows from a thumb drive. So the HDD is IDE as well now.

I had this exact issue when trying to actually install 7 on my newly built system using an salvaged dvd drive from an old system. The drive could be recognized, but wouldn't actually allow the software to be read from the dvd.

Apparently this is an issue with older drives being used for/in win7 systems. As I understood it, the issue had to do with poor/outdated software on the drive that had interfering conflicts with the win7 OS.

I'm not technical enough to understand the full details, but suffice it to say that I bought a brand new drive from CompUSA for pretty cheap ($20ish?) that worked (and is still working) beautifully.

Hey tank, that's a good point. My "bad" drive is now in the trash and I pulled an even older drive out of a box and just had it work with default driver 7 comes loaded with. Crazy. Zaria you fix it yet?

no fix yet. =(

I'm considering just buying an external dvd writer.


Altho, after Bloodmoon's comment, I think I'll try a firmware upgrade and see if that fixes it.