my dvd/cd rw drive is gone now...i burned a lot of cds one nite, im not sure if it was gone after that..but i cant burn anything obviously. it says theres no device. the dvd drive opens and closes, but thats all it does. anyone have any idea's?

i go to add new hardware and it finds it. it shows the DVD RW drive with a ! by it and JLMS XJ-HD 166S with a ! by it too, and they say "Windows cannot initialize the device driver for this hardware. (Code 37)"

i tried uninstalling and reinstalling but that didnt work. should i check the cables?

Definitely check the IDE Cable. Also, I found this on another site:

This arises if additional software has gone missing - usually that from a CD burning program that has been uninstalled, but let pointers to it in the registry. Get a registry patch file, cdgone.reg, from www.aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip and merge it into the registry and reboot - you should then find the drives and will need to reinstall whatever CD burning package you wish to use.

Let me know about what works and such.

which cables exactly do i check? my friend told me to switch primary and secondary cables or wutever.. i already checked just to make sure everything was in correctly..but if i needed to switch them or wutever..is it those big wide gray cables or those bundled colored wires?

The big wide gray wires are IDE cables and they connect to the motherboard so the computer will recognize the drive. The multi-colored cables are connected to the PSU to supply power to the drive.

ok well..i switched the cables from the cd drive and dvd drive..and they still arent working..last time without switching them i uninstalled and reinstalled and it said there was a problem with the hardware and bla bla..when it found the hardware this time..it didnt give me an error saying there was a problem..but this still dont work

and i also tried unplugging the dvd's power supply and ide cable to see if it was power and whatnot

Did you do the thing I have in the quote box in my initial reply?

yea i did that last night, and was going to see if it worked this morning and it DOES..good thing you found that. now i need to find the drivers and such