CD RW not working

I purchased this computer 02/2002, emachines T1120, it has a samsung CD RW rom (SW-224B) I removed some viruses and hijackers from my computer recently and now the drive does recognize any disc I put in. I need to install a printer and can not. You can see that I have a cd drive D: but does not show the disc inside. I tried to uninstall the driver this did not help. I really need help. tried support at samsung, guess the drive is too old.

 

If you uninstalled the driver, that could be part of your problem! I have owned many Emachines, have two at present, and am typing on one of them now. None of mine use a special driver for the CD-RW or DVD-RW, only the Windows drivers supplied. Go to device manager and see if there is a yellow exclamation point next to your CD-RW. If so, delete the device, and reboot the machine and Windows will detect it and install the necessary drivers.
If this doesn't work, try the drive in another system to see if it is recognized. If it is and works, then I would suspect the IDE cable first, as they do go bad. If you have been inside your system, make sure that this cable is seated securely on the device and the motherboard.
If it works in another system, but not in yours, and you have replaced the IDE cable, then I would say that some system files may have gotten corrupted by the viruses/spyware, and that a reinstall of the operating system may be in order to correct the problem!
One other thought! You said that no CD was recognized. Have you tried going to MY Computer, right clicking on the drive, and clicking on explore? If doing this shows the files on the CD, it could be that AutoPlay has been disabled!
If the drive worked in another system, but still won't in yours, then a reformat may be in order. The restore disks do a great job of this, but wipe out all your accumulated data.
If the drive wasn't recognized in the other system either, then it has gone South and is due for replacement. Hope that this helps.