I burned a CD two days ago with no problem. Then yesterday, my computer stopped detecting both the CD-RW and the DVD drives. Neither one has a drive letter in Windows Explorer.

I'm pretty sure that neither one is showing up in Device Manager, either. They are not listed under "Disk drives" and there is no heading for "CD-rom." There are no yellow exclamation points.

But, both drives open and close properly when I push their eject buttons, and both have blinking green lights when that happens.

It's an HP Pavilion 8765C running Windows ME. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&dest_page=product&product=60943&dlc=en&docname=bph05968

I didn't install anything new; this has just happened out of the blue, as far as I can tell. The way I became aware of it is that my Adaptec DirectCD Wizard icon in the taskbar is X'd out, and complaining "No supported CD-R/CD-RW drive!" I tried doing a system restore, but to no avail.

I found this thread which is similar but not exactly the same. http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280807 I'm hopful that it's not a hardware problem, but can be fixed by fiddling with the registry. (But I'm afraid to start doing that until I'm sure that it will help and not screw me up worse.)

Any ideas? Thank you!

You will have to edit the Registry as I explained HERE (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1535503&postcount=4).

It's not difficult. Just create a Restore Point, and follow the simple instructions.

Thanks so much for your response, Insomniac! But my registry is a little different; it's ME, not XP.

There is no "Class" directory under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l. That key is located instead in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

And there is neither an UpperFilters nor a LowerFilters value there, just this:

(Default) (value not set)
Class "CDROM"
Link "CDROM"

After doing more googling, I actually went ahead and deleted the entire key, but still no dice. So I updated the registry from the backup I'd made, and now I'm back at square one. Do you have any more thoughts? Thanks again.

ME is a buggy piece of crap at the best of times.

Anyway, do the drives light up when the PC starts, or does the eject open the tray etc?

ME is a buggy piece of crap at the best of times.

Hehe, I agree with this comment.

Yes, the drives do light up on startup, and yes, I am able to manually open both drives by pushing the eject buttons. (And they light up when I do this, too.)

Thanks

I really can't offer any further suggestions.

Sometimes uninstalling all burning software can help, but if not, I would be inclined to install ME over itself (you won't lose anything if you don't format).

(the drives should work in DOS)

Argh.

Well, I really appreciate all your help, anyway. Thank you very much!