CD ROM not recognized anymore

[Bloopie1]

I've had this happen on two separate computers and one of my friend's. The CD ROM drive icon "D" is no longer appearing in My Computer. The drive can still be opened and closed. One of the computers is running Win98, the other Win2K. Any ideas on the fix besides installing a new CD ROM drive?

 

[MattTheTech]

Well the power connection is definently hooked up. But perhaps the IDE cable has slipped loose.

Does it show that the CD drive is being detected upon boot? If so, then your cable is _probably_ ok, and it very well could be a software issue. You can try seeing if there are any problems in the device manager, and remove the devices and let windows set them up again.

It wouldn't hurt to reinstall chipset drivers. (ex: via's 4-in-1 if your board is via based).

From my experience, this is caused by a bad drive maybe 1/4 of the time.