cd rom drive has a big yellow exclamation mark

[Tingaleo]

So I set out to redo my girlfriends computer, repartitioned the hard drive and installed windows xp with no problems.  Reinstalled some drivers from the disk she was given with the computer with no problems.  During one of the many updates to windows xp though, the cd rom drive developed a problem where in device manager it shows a big yellow exclamation mark and says the drivers can not be uploaded and that they are either corrupt or missing.  There is also a dvd rom drive that developed the same problem.  I have uninstalled both drives and reinstalled them and the problem persists.  Now I cant even start over as I cant boot from the cd rom drive.

The computer has an AMD 2400+  1.67 GHz with 480 Ram, and I believe is on a VIA motherboard, at least that is what the driver disk is labeled as.  Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should try next? I would really appreciate it.

[patio]

I would try another IDE cable....
Also DLoad a WinME bootdisk from bootdisk.com and extract the file to create a bootable floppy. Get the one with CDRom support.
You should then be able to use the drives.

[Tingaleo]

Thanks.  I think the problem started when I installed the drivers that came with her computer.  I restored to an earlier point and was able to complete the install by being more choosy about which drivers I installed.  Thanks for the advice though.  I've made a bootable disk like you suggested in case the problem comes up again.

[patio]

You probably skipped over one of the MBoard drivers that was needed...