DVD/CD-ROM drives are disabled.

[genew]

My problem is similar to that described in the thread "DVD/CDrom and CD-R problem. Need some fresh ideas to fix this one." but I have two drives that are behaving the same. Both drives have been operating just fine until today. Now neither of them show up in the My Computer drive list. They both show up in the Device Manager with exclamation points. Under Properties I get this message:
"A driver (service) for this device has been disabled.  An alternate driver may be providing this functionality. (Code 32)".

Incidentally, these are not identical drives. One is a NEC DVD-RW ND-3500AG and the other is a Sony DVD-RW DRU-820UA.
One of these is the master on the secondary IDE controller on the motherboard. That one shows up in the BIOS listing. The other is running off of a Pioneer IDE1 PCI controller and does not appear in the BIOS but this has always been the case.

I have uninstalled both drives. On reboot both of them were recognized by the operating system (Windows XP Pro SP2) and reinstalled automatically. But the status did not change. 

The processor is an AMD Athlon 1.4 MHz. System RAM is 1 GB.
I looked for drivers on the Sony site and did not find any.

I have not installed any major software lately but programs are continually updating and/or installing plug-ins. I use the ZoneAlarm Security Suite for firewall and Antivirus. It is up to date.

I have run out of ideas. Can anyone help?

[Tge]

A :

Nero and roxio products dont mix , and foul up system aspi ... if this is the case , its simpler to do a system reinstall from scratch .

B:

Go into device manager and uninstall the devices under dvd/cdrom drives .
Uninstall ide / atapi controllers , secondary first , primary second .
Locate and uninstall device driver for "PCI controller"

Reboot , system will reinstall drivers ... Reboot once more .

You didnt say if you could open the drives , but you issue may be from :

A poorly working psu will cause issues ... upgrade to a quality 450watt psu (minimum wattage for all new systems) .

A: If 12volt rail fails , bios and system will see units , yet they will not fuction .

B: If 5volt rail fails , both bios and system will not see them , yet they appear to function (lights on , tray opens and closes)

Try replacing ide cables ... they can go bad at anytime .

The difference between 40pin vs 80pin ide cables :

A 40pin can be reversed , and 80pin can not .

All moden drives will work with a 40pin cable ... This is the truth , dont believe others who tell you , you need an 80pin cable , there false .

[genew]

Sorry for the delay in responding. After uninstalling and reinstalling the drives and controllers as suggested, the problem remained. I decided that the only solution was to reinstall Windows XP and for a number of reasons I won't go into here, this became more of an ordeal than it should have been. I have just now got email back.

First, the symptoms I was experiencing was that the drives would open and close, lights on, etc. They were seen by the bios but were not recognized by My Computer. The Device Manager could see them but reported that the drivers were disabled [somehow]. I checked system voltages and they are all normal. My PS is 400W.

Reinstalling Windows has cured the problem.

In restoring my system I had occasion to remap the drive letters of my various disk drives. I have 8 drives plus two CD/DVD drives and the drive letters after reinstalling did not match what I had before. So I went into the Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Manager and remapped them. In the process, I removed the drive letters prior to reassigning them. It occurred to me that if somehow, the drive letters had been removed from the optical drives, the symptoms would have been identical to what I e experienced. I don't know how this might have happened or if it could happen but it is a thought. If the situation ever arises again I will check to see if drive letters are assigned.

Gene