My system: Sager np 5730 cpu: centrino duo 2.0 ram: 2 gigs ram os: xp home video: 7900 go 512 Chronological description of events: My laptop has had issues with reading/copying dvds and cds for the last few weeks. Yesterday I inserted a cd and the autorun did not engage, at which time I checked the windows explorer, and the cd drive showed as empty. Shortly thereafter my computer restarted itself and refused to re-enter windows. It would power on but never make it to the windows loading screen, the computer then began giving my strange messages when it was failing to load windows. Such as: "operating system not found" "a disk error has occurred press ctrl+alt+del to restart", "windows could not start because the following file is missing or currupt: <windowsroot>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe please reinstall a copy of the file" I let it set for a night, and in the morning it resumed booting but could no longer see the cd drive at all. You gotta help me man, I've tried noting and I'm all outa ideas!

If you are comfortable editing the registry: Create a Restore point and back up the registry.Open regedit. Look for; HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\CurrentControlSet\SetControlClass. Key name: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} Value Data:[Delete all value data from upper and lower filters] Note-Do not delete the key or the multi-string values. Delete only the data values. The keys may be in more than 1 place. You will have to search for them. Exit regedit and reboot. http://computervitals.com/

Just a added note to per's Help provided. You can go to Download Guided Help at the below and the file will run and do a auto fix of upper and lower filters. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/

Ok, tried it and no dice. When I booted up it said something about the keys being incorrect and it was going to correct them, and that the cd would work on restart. But, upon restart, nothing. I did try the cd drive when the computer is off (there is a cd player built into the computer for some reason, so I can power on just the speakers and cd drive) and it wont even open then.

Tried the automatic one and once again nothing.

Replace the drive or borrow one from friend for a test. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

THIS shall fix your problem (download & run the guided help that allows M$ to help you fix it. Good luck. i_XpUser