i just purchased a dvd rom with the nero software. I put the rom in and the tray opens and closes, but i cannot find the drive in list under my computer. the device shows in device manager and it says it is working properly. it shows my cdrom drive and my usb drive but not the dvd. also, i cannot get the nero software to download from the disc. any help would be appreciated. thanks

try going to the manufacturer website and try finding drivers there, i had a similar problem with that and i just located the correct drivers and it worked normally the computer read from it and everything worked out fine

"try going to the manufacturer website and try finding drivers there" You don't need to install drivers for an optical drive. "it shows my cdrom drive and my usb drive but not the dvd" How did you connect it? Is it sharing the same cable with the CD-ROM? Did you configure the master/slave/cable select jumpers properly? "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

yes it is sharing the same cables as the cd rom. i had another cdrom hooked up before this and it worked fine. i am not sure how to configure the master/slave/cable select jumpers.

The jumper is on the rear of the drive. All you have to do is make sure the cap is placed on the correct pins. Here's what it looks like: http://www.hardwarezone.com/img/dat... Whenever you have two drives connected to the same IDE cable, one must be set as Master (MA) & the other must be Slave (SL). Either that or BOTH must be set to Cable Select CS). If you use CS, the drive on the end plug automatically becomes the Master & the drive on the center plug is the Slave. "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

You probably don't have a DVD-rom ONLY drive - such as drive cannot burn a CD or DVD and does not need burning software such as Nero and would probably not come with such on a CD. You probably have a DVD/CD combo burner drive, which can always also read DVD-rom and CD-rom disks. Device Manager in Windows has only a DVD/CD-rom category, but normally all optical drives are listed there, whether they are CD-rom only or DVD-rom only or burner drives. If a burner drive is recognized properly, it is usually listed in My Computer as something else - e.g. a DVD burner drive as a DVD-RW drive. If your CD and/or DVD drive is/are IDE connected.... Fairly recent DVD burner or DVD/CD combo burner drives that are capable of 16X DVD +R or DVD -R or greater are capable of UDMA66 data transfer burst speeds and must be connected to an 80 wire data cable in order to work properly. Your DVD drive probably requires such a cable - your CD drive does not, but if it's on the same data cable, the data cable probably must have 80 wires. (the connectors on the cable and the drive are always 40 "pin" whether you have an 80 or a 40 wire data cable). "the device shows in device manager and it says it is working properly." If you mean the model of the DVD drive shows up listed under DVD/CD-rom category in Device Manager......... If you don't have your main chipset drivers loaded yet, your DVD drive may not be properly recognized as a drive capable of burning, and may be listed in My Computer as a DVD-rom drive instead of a DVD-RW drive. See response 4 in this: http://www.computing.net/answers/wi... If the model of the DVD drive DOES NOT show up listed under DVD/CD-rom category in Device Manager......... That category is there as long as you have one or more optical drives that are recognized by Windows - it is there if it merely recognizes your CD drive only. Your bios is not seeing the DVD drive either, and you must connect / jumper the drive properly as Jam has detailed. If your bios is seeing the DVD drive, you usually see it's model listed on the first black screen as you boot, if that isn't obscured by a logo screen.