I'm still getting the error code 31 after everything i've done. What have i done? One moment i was burning a cd and hours later when i decided to get a file from a cd..the drive suddenly disappeared. I looked all over this forum and others to find a solution. 1). I never had Ataptec EZCD Creator on my computer..so that eliminates the solution of going to their site and getting the patch. 2). I have no IRQ conflicts whatsoever 3). The CDR/CDRW cd-rom i'm using is a NEC-NR7800A. Sadly, their site didn't have any information whatsoever on this device. This device requires no driver either so looking for it was useless. 4). I had Nero version 5 something..but i uninstalled it. Still no luck. 5). I didn't have Windows Media Player 7 so that also eliminated the solution of uninstalling it with all support components particularly the Ataptec option. 6). I also tried editing the registry by deleting the upperfilters and lowerfilters. That didn't work either..so i restored it. Now the question i have about that is what is the upperfilters and lowerfilters..does it necessarily say "upperfilters=", etc?..i just deleted the very top and bottom lines of the registry and all it did was instead of DVD/CDROM it changed it to CD-ROM when i went into the device manager. Anyhow..the computer still isn't loading the driver for it. 7). Flashed the bios..that didn't work either. I apologize if i'm not being as technical as i should be but i've been at this for the last 7 hours and can't find a solution. I'm wondering if it's the cdrom.sys driver that is displayed. NEC doesn't provide a driver since it doesn't exist. Please help me!!

Have you tried doing a repair with your win2k disk? When I finally give up that's what I do, but then again I'm no guru.

There should be entries in the registry named "upper filters" and "lower filters" You must delete the whole entry "upper filters" and "lower filters"(right click,select "delete")BACK UP THE REGISTRY FIRST! I had the same problem and that cured it. go here:- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q270008 Do it even if you never had Easy cd creator!

Hey ray, The filters weren't there when i opened up the registry..that's why i was completely confused when the directions said upper and lower filters. i messed around with the registry a little bit (dumb idea) and i got the code 19 error (corrupted registry..so i got on my roommates computer and copied the hive and restored the key..once i did that..i got the error 31 back again..so i went in and saw that the upper and lower filters were there..so i deleted them..and no luck again. The thing is..the filters were never there to begin with. That's the first thing i did when i ran into this problem. I'm trying to repair it with the 4 boot disks i got since my cdrom doesn't work and it won't repair. I still can't figure it out. =( any ideas???

I fixed the problem..i had to reformat my hard drive and reinstall W2K. Repairing it didn't work..so i'm starting on a brand new slate..thanks for the help folks