Help please!!!! All of a sudden my cd drive is not showing up from My Computer or in device manager. The only thing I have done to my XP Home SP2 lately is install Nov.'s Windows updates in particular a patch for media player. Previously I've fixed this by leaving it a few days and it comes back but I have some software I need to install from a cd asap. Also I don't know if it's related by the update feature of my anti-virus stopped working around this time too (am in talks with Trendmicro support about that).Any help would be really appreciated as all suggestions I've found don't quite match my problem and involve registry edits which I'm not keen on.I've checked everything is firmly plugged in and the light lights up so think it may be a software thing.Gail

Do you have the original bootable windows XP disc? If you do, please try to start your computer using the disc: Place the disk in the drive that you cant see, and then restart your computer. depending on the brand of computer you have use the (ESC) or (F12) (or whichever key specified by the bios) key at the splash screen to access the one time boot menu. use the arrow keys to select the cdrom/dvdrom/optical drive and tap the enter key. you should see a message that says press any key to boot from cd... tap the spacebar at this point. If the machine starts the XP setup routines, wait and then tap the F3 key to stop. remove the cd, and shutdown your computer. Let us know your results, Please.

Problem already solved but thanks for the reply.Gail

Would you please share how you solved this for the benefit of other members with similar problem.