Having problems with my CD-ROM drive- when I put any CD-ROMs in, the error message "E:\ drive is not accessible" pops up. It gives me 2 options: retry or cancel. Clicking retry makes the message appear over and over. It also tells me there's no valid media in the drive, & to make sure a disk's inserted and the drive door's closed. I know the media is valid since I've used these CD-ROMs on this computer before. It is inserted OK, and the drive door is of course closed... Any idea what the problem may be or how I can fix it? thanks

Boot up with a bootdisk and choose cdrom support. Pay attention to the last few lines that load prior to the final a:\> as that will indicate the cdrom drive letter (most bootdisks temporarily change the letter). Then put a known good data (not audio) disk in and at the dos prompt type dir X:\ and enter, where X: is the cdrom drive letter indicated when you booted up. You may need to hit R a few times to give the cdrom time to spin up. Eventually it should give a directly listing of the cd. If it doesn't the cdrom may be bad, it's connection may be loose or the lens may be dirty. You can open the case to check the connection and use a cleaning disk for the lens. If it does eventually show the directory then the problem must be in windows somewhere.