I attempted to burn my pictures to a cd and found that the task was not listed under the picture tasks. The cdrom/dvd drive is designated as E: in My Computer. Unfortunately it is not currently listed and when I load a cd or dvd it fails to go into the customary high speed startup spin. I looked in the device manager and find it listed (with the exclamation mark) and when I right clicked it found a message that read something like the proper driver was loaded but it was unable to locate the hardware device, (code 41). I deleted the driver and reloaded it a few times but to no avail. I used the troubleshooter located in that window and was advised that it was a bad connection or a bad device. I checked the connection and replaced the drive with a dvd burner. No luck, same problem! I checked the windows update site and searched the site using code 41 as the search word. It indicated that the driver needed updating. I went to the device manufacturers site and downloaded a firmware driver which I loaded and still nothing. It is listed in the BIOS settings. I have not added any new programs but did uninstall iTunes a week ago. It was working at that time and I had not used the drive again until I tried this time. Any suggestions? I am going to change the IDE cable? and will look at it in safe mode. According to one piece of advice I read about is that if I delete the driver in safe mode it might reveal a "ghost".

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/EN-US/

Thanks a bunch for the info. Tried it today and voila! my cdrom is back. 10 minutes of toil compared to hours and hours of frustration! Somedays...Thanks Babyboy!