I built a computer for a FRIEND of mine about a year ago. Just recently, the two DVD/CD drives stopped working. They do not appear under My Computer, but if I look in CMOS, they show up as Master and Slave on the Primary IDE.

When I look in Device Manager (Windows XP Home SP3), the Primary and Secondary IDE Channels each has two entries, and all four entries have a yellow circle with an exclamation mark in it. I deleted those four entries, rebooted the computer, and they reinstalled, but still no good - the yellow circles reappeared. I have tried running in Safe Mode, and still cannot access the drives. I also reinstalled the chipset drivers on the Asus motherboard.

It appears that maybe something is corrupted in Windows, but I’m not sure how to fix it. I put in the original Windows CD and went to the Repair option, and at that POINT, using the Command Prompt, I can see both drives are there.

Any idea what is going on and how I can get this working again. Right click on any Channel, click "Properties", then "Advanced settings" tab. Does it show PIO mode?My Primary IDE Channel (I have nothing connected to the Secondary Channel but it has the same symptoms), Devices 0 and 1 both show a Device Type of Auto Detect, Transfer Mode of DMA if Available, and CURRENT Transfer Mode as Not Applicable.

Not sure what PIO Mode is all about, but I tried that setting and shut off Auto Detect. After booting BACK up, everything had changed back to what I listed above.In Device Manager right clik the CDRom drive and select uninstall/remove...
You will recieve a warning...ignore it and re-boot.