DVD Drive not working

Hey guys,

My DVD drive has stopped reading any disks inserted into it, not even detecting that there's anything in it. When I put a disk in it will spin the disk for a short while before giving up. In 'My Computer' it simply shows that the drive is empty and gives the message 'please insert a disk into drive E' when clicked on. The Device manager claims it is working properly.

I have tried replacing the Drive with a different DVD drive and the same thing happens which leads me to believe it must be a software problem although I could try another Drive if you think its worth it. I've tried uninstalling the drivers and letting Windows pick it up again after rebooting which it does without fail. I've tried multiple disks, both CD's and DVD's with the same result. I have tried doing a system restore to a point when the drive was working as well as installing the latest nForce drivers for my motherboard.

My system specs are: Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, Intel Q6600 quad core processor, 8800GT 512mb, 2GB DDR2 Ram and I'm running on XP service pack 2

I'm running out of ideas now other than a reformat, so any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks in advanced!

Edit: forgot to say, both Drives I've tried were IDE

 

It could be a driver/software problem, in which case the driver for the optical drive in device manager would probably have a ! mark. If it doesn't, most likely the controller on the motherboard has fried or the cable isn't working. Try the other IDE controller or another cable and see if that fixes your problem.

 

try refreshing the drivers by going into Device Manager, selecting the rom drive in question and right click uninstall, then reboot. Windows will uninstall and reinstall the generic drivers it uses to access the drive. Sometimes it helps to enter the safemode screen when you restart and select "last known good configuration" as well.

On the otherhand, if you have recently added or removed an optical drive or switched any drives around inside the machine it could also be a jumper position problem (master slave).

You might also want to try cleaning the registry with Ccleaner to make sure any old software uninstalls are not still trying to hold onto the drive and creating a conflict (using several burners and not getting a clean uninstall can cause this problem).

As a last resort I would try a firmware update. Firmware doesn't get corrupted easily, but when it does the drive becomes useless.