I would take a look in the BIOS and see if the optical drives are being 
correctly identified within it.  While I was there, I would change the boot 
order to make one of those CD-ROMS the primary boot drive, and then, I would 
see if I could boot from a bootable CD (you can use your WinXP CD for this, 
for instance).  These steps are aimed at trying to eliminate the issue being 
a hardware problem.

I believe that some forms of malware disable the functioning of optical 
drives.  Update your virus scanner and spyware scanner and run a thorough 
scan of your system.  As an alternative, see if you can download and run an 
online scanner, such as Kaspersky's.  (Kaspersky's online scan will not 
offer to fix any problems, but it will identify an malware that it locates.)

Of course, it is not unusual for malware to also try to disable virus 
scanners; so, if you find that yours doesn't seem to be working and you 
can't install Kaspersky's, this in itself might be a sign of what is going 
on.

Hope this helps,

John Sproule

-----------------Original Message Below---------------

Date:    Mon, 6 Aug 2007 15:31:44 -0700
From:    Dick Mason <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: optical drive problem

I tried to run a CD today and the drive spun up, the lights blinked,
but it would not start.  I looked in "my computer" and neither of my
optical drives were shown. Hoping it was as simple as a bad cable, I
changed out the EIDE cable which fixed nothing, so I tried every
combination hookup I could on the primary and secondary EIDE cables,
to no avail.  I looked at the device manager and both drives had the
dreaded yellow circle with exclamation point.  Under "properties", I
got the following message: "Windows cannot start this hardware device
because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete
or damaged (code 19)".  I then tried a system restore back to the
earliest date available, as I don't know for sure when this problem
started, but that did not fix the problem.  Any ideas on what to do
next?  I would do a repair installation of XP, but without an optical
drive, I cannot do that.  The system is a P4, 2.8 GHz, Avit V17 MB
running XP Pro SP2.  Thanks in advance for any help this great list can 
offer

Dick

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