I had problems with an earlier CD rom so I bought and installed a replacement. It initially wouldn't read a CD and EVENTUALLY it did. I loaded the first disk of a 4 disk game and it ended up never reading/finding the 2nd disk after installation. Under my compute, it would show "CD/DVD LiteON" the disk would go in it would flash a few times and then disappear and" D/DRive "appears. The CD_rom SHOWS up under DEVICE manager and says the drivers are fine. MAkes me wonder if my first rewriter was OK and the problem is somewhere else. Should I replace the IDE ribbon first? Am I MISSING something? Maybe in the bios? Sounds like either the drive itself is faulty, perhaps a manufacturer defect, or wherever you bought it from their workers dropped it too much taking it off their stock trucks.

Or, it could be something like the IDE cable or power molex aren't plugged in all the way.

If you're sure you plugged it in all the way and such you could try returning it to where you bought it for a refund or even a replacement of the same model.. unless they'll let you try another of the same price or something. If the problem persists after you use a different drive, then it is probably more serious.