DVD-ROM not working/corrupt driver

Hello all, I have been asked for help by a family member having trouble with the DVD-ROM installed in his laptop. The laptop is a Patriot 2450 with a Pentium 4 processor running Windows xp home edition.
The problem is that when you open 'my computer' the drive is not listed and it fails to operate if you insert a CD/DVD, I've noticed when you boot up you see the message 'capable but disabled' and when you check the device manager the following message is displayed when you click properties 'Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing (Code39)'
This problem originally arose after he installed some software (don't know what it was).
If anyone can help I would be very grateful.

Best regards, Dazz

 

Try removing the DVD drive in device manager then rebooting. Windows will detect new hardware and reinstall it.

 

if that fails, try this

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314060

 

Thanks for the replies, tried removing the drive and re-booting to no avail, so tried the regedit solution, only thing is there doesn't seem to be an upper filters value only a lower one - or it could be the other way round, I forget - so should I just delete the filter value that is there anyway and proceed as advised?

Terminally bewildered, Dazz

 

If you only have a lowerfilter value, yes, delete that.

Make sure you backup whatever you modify.

 

Thanks for all the help guys, the problem is now fixed!

-Dazz