I am on Windows 2000. I recently noticed that the computer wouldnt recognize any of the CD's or DVD's I would insert - it would just say "please insert a disk into drive H:" when I dbl-click on the drive. It doesn't even seem to try to spin the drive - the dialog box comes up righ away. This drive used to work fine.

Here's what I have tried so far:

• removed the drive from hardware manager and rebooted (no change)
• swapped the DVD drive with an older CD-RW drive (no change)
• swapped the IDE cable (no change)
• tried the starforce remover tool just in case (didn't find any starforce components)
• applied all Windows updates just in case

Note also that:

• I can r-click on the drive and open the tray by selecting "eject" (so I know I am looking at the right drive)
• both BIOS and Windows correctly identify the drives (display manufacturer and type fine)

Looks to me like a Windows issue but not sure what else to try. Google doesn't return anything that seems relevant. Many thanks in advance for your suggestions!

This is a shot in the dark, but do you have a usb drive (memory or external?) plugged in? For whatever reason they always show up as H: on my pc?

Are there any errors in the device manager?

Thanks for the replies:

no, no USB drives in. Plus I disconnected the drive, rebooted once, shutdown, reconnected and restarted - and drive now shows as D:. But symptoms remain the same.

No errors in the device manager. The event viewer shows no error either (I see a warning on a paging operation on this drive a few days ago, but that's it).

Any other idea?

Is there any caching settings for cdrom drives? (seems odd that Windows asks for a disk to be inserted without even trying to access the physical drive first).

disconnect the floppy, a dvd/cd-rom drive if you have an extra one, pull out all but 1 stick of memory, etc. If it works, then you probably have a power supply that's on it's way out.

unfortunately that is the extent of my current config: 1 stick of RAM, 1 HDD, 1 CDROM - no floppy nor any external PCI cards...

Now, the CD-ROM drive is listed under "unknown devices" in the device manager. But when I check the drivers associated with it they are the standard CDROM drivers though. I am not sure what that means.

Any other suggestion will be very welcome. Short of any I might have to try to reformat and re-install the OS.

I'm having the exact same problem. I can't boot from a CD either, which makes me think the problem is at the BIOS level or between the BIOS level and Windows. Yes, I know the CD is good and the settings are correct in CMOS. I've got an old MSI motherboard if that matters.

Is this a sign of the motherboard dying??

You seem to have tried switching out all the various parts. One thing left I can see is the IDE connector on the motherboard to which you are plugging in the drive. It could be bad. Can you switch the connectors between the hard drive and the optical drive? If you can't boot, then you know it is the connector.

You could also try connecting the hard drive and optical disk to the same connector using a single IDE cable in master and slave device config.

As for me, I have tried all of those already. In every combination the hard drive works fine but I can't open any CD's. The computer even boots from the hard drive when it's set as the slave drive.