Neither one of my drives will register that a disc is in them. When you click on "my computer" both drives show up. When you right click on either of the drives, click on "properties", then click on "hardware", it says that the device status is "device is working properly". But when you insert a disc into either drive, it doesn't acknowledge that there is a disc there.
Would cleaning the drives maybe fix it? Or does that mean it's time for new drives?

Have they ever worked in the past? How old is this computer?

Are these newly installed? Or did they work at one time? Are you getting any lights on the drives when you insert the CD?

The computer is 2 1/2 years old and both drives worked fine till about 3 weeks ago. The lights will come on initially then go back off.

Sounds like your motherboard may be going . Have you by any chance opened up the computer around the time that this started occuring? Maybe one of the cables are loose.

not brave enough to open it up! any suggestions?

Well if your mother-board is going then theres nothing you can do. The Drives most likely have nothing wrong with them.

Hate to say it but you're most likely going to need A new PC.

If you wish to you can save the hard-drive(s) the CD-rom drives, and anything else you want and just buy A new motherboard.

If this is the route you wish to go then here are two links that you can order A new motherboard from: Tiger Direct New Egg.

I am wondering if it could be the power supply. I recently had a cdrom quit working on a friends computer. I changed the power connector to a different one from the power supply and it started working again. Maybe the power supply isn't giving them enough power to work properly. That is a much easier fix than a new motherboard. Is the computer working ok besides the cd drive problems?

That is very unlikely do to the fact that there have not been problems associated with these drives in the past. I can almost gaurentee that it is the motherboard.

Your CDs are on your Secondary IDE bus. Delete the bus from the Device Mangaer and see if XP will fix it on boot.

I want to thank everyone for the ideas. I think I'll try deleting the bus first and see where it leads.

ironicly, both of my drives went bad at the same time. my computer guy tested them and replaced them and now it works great.