CD-ROMs Failing In Win2k & XP Boxes?

jptechnical writes "I have an interesting hardware/software development brewing. I have a friend with a computer shop down the way and he has had a rash of nearly a dozen Win2k & XP boxes come through with disabled or missing CD-ROM drives. They work in DOS, and are bootable, but are either disabled, not functioning or simply missing in Windows' device manager. Does anyone know of a virus that may be causing this? I cannot find any common vector from system build to software installed or anything. MS says reformat, but where's the fun in that? What resources aside from MSKB and google searching do slashdot readers use for troubleshooting strange problems?"

BIOS settings

[Drunken_Jackass]

I'd bet that the BIOS isn't recognizing the CD Drive type and Windows 2K/Xp freaks out about it.

Have him check to see if the BIOS is recognizing anything on that IDE chain. If not, set it to auto detect and that should do the trick.

Not exactly the same problem, but...

[superpenguin]

...I had my DVD drive on my XP box half crap out on me. For some reason it spontaneously stopped playing DVDs. I had just taken out a DVD that played fine, and put in another DVD and it wouldn't recognize that there was a disc in the drive. No other DVDs would play either. It would still recognize audio CDs and CD-ROMs. I did the usual stuff: reinstalled drivers and such. Eventually, I just did a firmware upgrade on the drive and it's been fine since.