D: and E: drives (CD-RW and DVD-ROM respectively) apparantly no longer exist on my computer, although the disc trays will come out and will appear to be reading any disc I put into them. Also, my Floppy drive has changed itself from A: to B:. I read some things and tried to reinstall XP (Upgrade) to fix it, yet when it asks for the SP1 disc, it still can't read the D: or E: drives! Any ideas?

Download TweakUI from MS. Go to My Computer (in Tweak), Drives, and be sure the drives you want are checked. This may or may not be it, but it's worth checking.

Try disconnecting each of the CD/DVD drives and see if the other one works. The floppy drive might be cabled incorrectly. If it's connected to the end connector (past the twist) it becomes the A: drive. If it's connected to the middle connector it's the B: drive.

I do so love to tinker with my computer. Ok so now we have proven I'm crazy let's fix yours. If the jumpers on both drives are set to master or slave the system will not see either one. The one on the end of the cable is master and the jumper should be set to master. The one in the middle of the cable is the slave and the jumper set to slave. This cable should be plugged in to the secondary IDE socket on the motherboard. The hard drives set up the same way but plug in to the primary IDE socket on the motherboard. Ham30 is correct about the cable setup for the floppy. Normally the cable on the drive end has the twist in it and the cable points down. Check the settings for your drives in the bios. If you did any moving the drives around on the cable or added then removed a device that could well have confused the remembered set up. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

A minor correction to the last post. The Master does not have to be on the end connector and the Slave on the midde one. That is only applicable if they are plugged `Cable Select'.

I got so used to doing things a certain way for so long I just got in the habit of putting them in that order. Thanks Ham30 for pointing that out. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid...

IMO, the cable makers shouldn't be putting those labels on the cables that mislead people.