The DVD ROM drive has suddenly disappeared from the My Computer screen and when I insert a CD or DVD, it will spin for a second and nothing happens. When I remove the DVD drive and insert the Floppy drive into the UltraBay the Floppy drive works flawlessly. I tried shutting it down and booting up with various programs, until one finally booted up, which seems to tell me the DVD is somewhat still alive though it does not show on My Computer page. In trying to trace the cause, a few days ago, I had installed Service Pack 4 but when the pc behaved strangely, I uninstalled the SP4 and now back to SP2 which is the IBM original OS that came with the laptop. Can anyone throw any light on this mystery of the missing DVD rom? Thank you.

Does the drive show in Device Manager?

First insert the DVD rom and boot in to the Bios. If you dont see it here then you will not see it anywhere else.

Thanks for your replies. Tried them all. Eventually had to restore to OS factory state.