hey guys. im having a problem with my cd-r drive.whats going on is that it is detected by windows but it can't read a cd. when a cd is put in the drive the light comes on and it spins for like 5 secs and then nothing happens. it doesnt show the contents of the cd in " My Computer" either. please someone help me out here.any help is greatly appreciated

sounds serious, buddy. see if you can boot from your windows xp cd, might show that the problem is in windows and not with the hardware, in which case you could delete the driver and have windows detect it again on reboot. if that doesn't work it might need the lens cleaning. there's some half-decent cleaning gizmo's around now.

you can try to enable dma if not enabled

Just a question.
Have you tried right clicking the drive icon on My PC? If not, right click on the cd unit icon, a pop up window opens and then click Browse or properties. This way you'll know if the cd is reading or not.

Not all the cds are autorun (depends on the cd content and the cd-unit properties stablished by the user.

Hope this help.
Saludos desde Mexico.
Charlie.