Rom/Atapi error

Friends cd rom has a problem inasmuch as it has 'exclamation marks beside it in Device Manager and it is not visible anywhere in Windows, so uninstalled driver/checked ribbon which was on the intermediary connector so put it to Master/Jumper set to Master but it will not show in Windows 7 32 bit. Here's the weird bit it shows in the Bios AND we put an OS disc in and rebooted and it began the process of instalation until it was stopped by my friend. Looked in Event Viewer and error reported on ''ATAPI' but no further information. Incidentally after uninstalling Rom driver the exclamation marks returned after boot completed. Will try a new ribbon tomorrow but seeing it read from the OS disc I assume thats OK. So is it a software setting problem and if so any suggestions gratefully recieved.

ASUS A8N-SLI
AMD 64X2 420
2 GIG MEMORY
WIN 7

 

Thanks for your response DavidGP. Since I last saw my friend he has managed to fix the prob by finding the error code 39 for DVD/CD Rom. It appears that he may have updated drivers recently that caused the error, he went to Registry and deleted as below. Thanks again for your reply. FIX as....
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SYSTEM
CurrentControlSet
Control
Class
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4) This folder is the DVD/CD-ROM Drive Class Description in the registry. Look for any of the following names in the right hand column.

UpperFilters
LowerFilters
UpperFilters.bak
LowerFilters.bak
5) If any of the above keys shown in step 4 are listed, right-click on them and choose Delete

:major