laptop not detecting DVD drive

[andyjl]

My laptop is having a hard time detecting my dvd drive. the problem started maybe a month or two ago. I thought it may have been a dusty lens on the dvd drive, i had a friend who cleaned that for me, he checked out my dvd drive and determined that it wasn't dead. When a disc is put in, it spins.

I also had daemon tools installed on my computer and it appeared that there was some conflict with that program, because i had set up an extra virtual drive and that was the one that kept showing up on My Computer. So after uninstalling that and rebooting, the dvd drive started working properly. However yesterday "My computer" was not detecting the dvd drive. I put a DVD in and it spins, but still no detection. I reinstalled daemon tools thinking maybe it would make the DVD drive appear again, but no success here. Also I have had daemon tools installed on my computer for a long time and this hasn't happened until recently.

I am not sure what the problem is, i thought of reformatting my computer but I don't want to do that unless absolutely necessary, and I"m sure my dvd would be detected if I do that. But I was hoping there was another solution. Does anyone know of what I could do to get my DVD drive to be correctly detected?
thanks

 

[The_Other_One]

So the drive will work fine otherwise? You can boot to a windows setup disk without a problem?

 

[brian]

have you tried to reinstall the driver?

 

[andyjl]

So the drive will work fine otherwise? You can boot to a windows setup disk without a problem?

i don't have a windows setup disk..

and i'm not sure how i would reinstall the driver..doesn't winxp have all the necessary drivers?

 

[oscaryu1]

Go to device manager and uninstall it, then reinstall it.