Have xp on a emachine, lent it to a friend and it came back without the disk drive working, the draw opens and closes but that's all. When I look in my computor the disk drive isn't even in there, is there anything I can do or do I need a new one?

Is it under Disk Management?

right click My Computer then click Manage then Disk Management .

If not is it detected in the BIOS? (When the computer starts?)


Many possibilities here and probably not a bad drive.

Many software installs dealing with DVD/CD drives will remove them from XP as they alter the registry.

Quite often simply uninstalling the drive via the Device Manager and rebooting will fix all.

Right click My Computer the click Manage then Device Manager > DVD/CD ROM etc.

right click the drive then click UNINSTALL then reboot.


After considering the above here might be more details:

CD drive filters etc.
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"CD Recording Software Will Cause Windows to Become Unstable" error message when you start Windows XP

Since loaning to a friend suggests the computer was transported somewhere, I would also look for loose connections - both power and data.

Well you hit the nail on the head there, it was a loose wire, tried the above advice and it didn't work so went and bought one, got it back and took the side panel off and lo and behold a loose conection, all fixed now thank you very much indeed for your time and bother..
I have taken the other one back and got a refund.

Great and thanks for the followup.