LG SuperMulti RW burner can't read cds

[Winter]

LG SuperMulti RW burner stopped reading any kind of cd media and most of the DVDr backups I made recently. Just 2 weeks ago I had the whole computer reformatted and partioned and all was fine til now.
No cables loose. No problem in device manager. The computer locks when a cd is inserted and only comes to when it is ejected. Computer claims there is no disc in drive.
WinXP oem. 1 gb ram.
Funny thing: inside the case is a cable (1397 I think it said) and 2 thin wires with ends that look like they go into speakers doing nothing- just bundled up and out of the way but originating from the computer- what the hey is that???

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Praetor]

I assume you have this drive ... see QUESTIONS 101.
to see how to check. If that's the drive, you can check here for a firmware update .. that might solve your problem.

Before you do that you may be interested in trying a quicker possibile solution:

What you might need to do is to uninstall the drive from Windows, reboot and let Windows automatically reinstall the device for you. To do so, (1) Control Panel, (2) System, (3) Hardware, (4) Device Manager, (5) Expand the DVD/CD-ROM Drives entry, right click on thr troublesome drive and uninstall it. Now simply reboot and let Windows try and repair itself.