my drive is a liteon ldw -815s , it used to read both cds and dvds quite fine. ii went out for leave for a few days and when i came back my system no longer recognizes cds even a bootable windows xp cd but it reads from dvd. please tell me a solution other than buying a new drive:takecall: :takecall:

Unfortunately your symptoms indicate a faulty drive.

The DVD and CD lasers work independently thus it is very common for one to fail without the other being affected.

If The drive cannot read Boot CD's then this is not a Windows or software problem. You could try cleaning the drive with some canned air and or reseating all the cables etc.

Fortunately new DVD/CD drives are basically inexpensive.