New Information on Lost "Optical" drives....

O.K. I took this computer's case apart and checked every cable and they were all intact. There are no drivers that come with CD rom and CD/rw drives as they use generic drivers from the o.s. so I'm really "stumped" on what to do next. I did have her go ahead and update (via Windows Update) as she had never done that before and who knows, maybe that will do it. But, if it doesn't....

I think after she does all the updates and if the problem still exists, I'll have her "restore" to a month ago (the last time she remembers using either drive) to see if that does the trick.

This is truly "weird" to say the least. You look at her "MY Computer" and there's no drive letters for either her CD/RW drive or her DVD_Rom drive. It's just too ironic that both would go bad at the same time so I'm convinced it's gotta be a clobbered system file. Does anyone know how to invoke "System File Checker" in ME? It's not on the Systems Information selection nor does it work from the "run" command as it does in XP. Can't run anything of course from any of her Optical drives either. She has a "recovery" CD but a lot of good that does under the circumstances.

NOTE! There is no "Exclamation" points or "Question Marks" on Device Mgr. BUT there is no entry for a CD drive of any kind so I can't even delete the driver and re-boot.

Totally stumped!

Any help would of course be appreciated.

JimU