My dvd and cd player keep disappearing from 'my computer ' and neither work.Dvd tray will open and close but no response from cd tray.Neither will read anything.
Have tried reinstalling drivers for both and also uninstalled IDE secondary channel and re-booted so it would re-install.
Sometimes the dvd and cd player will appear only to disappear when i next switch on.
When i have managed to get them both activated the computer freezes if i try and play any discs in them.

Have you any ideas?

Do the drives work outside the windows environment? ie; Raw DOS, etc.

Also, some optical drives don't like sharing an IDE channel with another optical drive. If you have two hard disks and two optical drives, it's usually best to put one of each on each IDE channel.

What O/S are you running?

Afraid you lost me a bit there Dan

How do i check the drives in Raw DOS and how to i change the IDE channels.

Also why am i sat here at 03:30 GMT when i should be in bed ??

If your system has a floppy drive, boot the machine with a 98SE boot disk, and choose Start with CDROM support. If the machines bios knows the drives are there, they should run under raw dos.
(The downloaded 98SE file must be run to create the boot floppy on one of your floppy disks.)

If recognized, MSCDEX will assign drive letters to the drives on the boot. Put a CD in a drive, give it a couple of seconds to spin up and read the data, then type in dir/a/o/p X:, where X: is the assigned drive letter. If you get a listing of the directories and files on the CD, the drive itself and the IDE controller it's on are functioning OK.

Changing IDE channels is done manually, via the data cables, drive jumpers (MA/SL), and motherboard controller connectors. The motherboard will have silkscreening on it near the IDE connectors signifying which is which. They'll be labeled IDE0, IDE1, or, IDE1, IDE2, or, Pri, Sec, or, Conn1, Conn2, etc.

There's also settings in your bios to tell the system which disks to check, in what order, for the boot process.

Do it tomorrow. Go to bed.

Have done the jiggery pokery with the '98 boot disk and only one of the drives was working.
I have completely disconnected the broken one and first drive is now working ok.
Does this mean i have to replace the broken drive or is it possible that the ribbon cable could be faulty and i should try swapping the drives over first.

Yes, try the non-functioning drive in the place where the working drive is now. Be mindful of the drive jumper settings. (MA/SL) Set it up exactly as the working drive is set when you switch.

I found anther cd drive laying around and put that in the system and all seems ok so i will assume that it was the non working one causing the errors.
So i'll be out buying a new cd writer today.
Another fine mess you've gotten me OUT of.
Big thanks to you and have recommended you to all my mates.

Yes, a non functioning IDE device can "kill" the IDE channel or the second device on that channel. CDROM's can be tricky. If the logic board on the drive is OK, but the laser or mechanical sections in the drive have failed, the system will still report no problems.

Glad you got it sorted out. Thanks for using D-A-L as your solution provider.