cd-rom no longer exists

I had a major breakdown of my main computer a few days ago. Now I have some new parts and am ready to install windows. However, I've run into some trouble and had to burn some files to a CD. On my old win98 machine I replaced the CD-ROM with my new CD-R drive (Lite-on 32x) and installed nero version 5.5.1.9. Everything went fine - I restarted, burned the files, then shut down. After removing the CDR and replacing it with the original CD-ROM, windows will no longer access any cd-roms. In the device manager, windows only shows the floppy drive, but not the CD-ROM or the hard drive. I've uninstalled Nero (which can't be reinstalled now, because it's on CD), and installed adaptec's aspi drivers, to no avail. If you have any ideas please let me know - I'll be back checking the forum in 8 hours or so, when I get out of work. BTW, yes, all the physical connections are fine. Thanks, gft

that's some windows but i already had twice on different PC's .. but i don't really know how to solve it despite re-installing

Not that this will help much, but I had a similar problem last week: I'm not doing much of anything and suddenly my computer just freezes solid. No sign of problems...nothing. I re-boot...no CD-ROM. I mean the drawer won't even come out. I re-boot again...same thing. This time I check "My Computer". Sure enough, it doesn't know about my CD-ROM, but it does know about my CD-RW and lists it a the slave it is. Slave to what, I think? I try "detect new hardware": nothing. I re-boot again, and there it is back again, all happy and safe. Happens twice more that afternoon. But not since. Mind you, this box is almost 3 years old, and this never happened before. I have little idea about why it happened except that I'm leaning towards a Windows problem. Here's my thinking: The drive isn't that old, and really has not had any serious usage. Unless there was a transient power suppy problem to the CD (possible), the unit simply shouldn't be failing this early. The second reason for Windows as the culprit: Why would the face-plate eject button fail only when the system was crashing, and then suddenly work just fine afterwards? Like I say, I don't have a lot of clues, but that's my thinking so far. Any ideas, anyone?

uninstall your dodgy copy of cloneCD if you use a pirate serial....or screw up in some way it removes your cd/dvd drives until uninstalled!