I'm in desperate need for help with my cd rom's. Here's the story. I got a computer from a corporate company after a worker gave it to me. I installed my own 60 gig HD, and then bought a burner and everything was going fine for months. The I got adventurous and tried to hook up a network. I was installing an ethernet card making this computer with the burner the host and/or server. Well I went to restart and now my cd rom drives are missing in the device manager with no "cd rom drivers" icon. Now seeing how the machine was given to me in don't have the driver. Well I went to the webpage of the manufacturer to get the driver and tried running it and that didn't work. Now I can't install the burner with out the basic cd rom first. It gets very confusing. But my basic problem is how to get my computer to get the device manager to recognize any cd rom device. The icon isn't even there. I'm stranded. Please Please HELP!!

Check the cable to your CD drive. You could have moved it in the process of installing the network card. Reseat both plugs, especially the motherboard end. Make sure the power supply is connected to the drive. Drivers are not required for CD drives in Windows. Are the CD drives recognized during boot-up? Any conflicts in device manager?

I agree with Dave, try also removing the Network card you just put in and reboot, see if the CD ROm shows up again. Also try booting into the BIOS and see if the BIOS recognizes the CD Rom. -Dave C