trying to get an old pc up and running. i have a dvd and a dvd r-w drive. There is power to both. I reseated the data cables. But whenever a dvd or cd is put in both, it doesnt recognize and media in there. "please insert DISC in drive", etc. the drives are recognized in My COMPUTER. drivers are updated.  Everything ELSE is fine on computer.

any ideas?bad drive - read laser(s) burned out or failed maybe. They are so cheap now it is not worth spending time on them.
well..i would say maybe if it was just one. but its both. and also, i'm doing it because i'm INTERESTED in finding the solution out of curiosity sake. so, lets say hypothetically is isnt the laserS. what would your guess be.one more thing you can try is moving the JUMPER on hte back of the drive(if it is an IDE drive)  I've had that problem in the past where the drives show up in my computer and device manager but won't work properly because the jumper is not in the right placesorry I didn't realise you were talking about 2 drives. If they are on the same IDE channel I would suspect the cable or as Atari7800 says, the jumpering.