Quick Tools to Try
PC Fixer - A Study show this application can pinpoint 40% of CD/DVD issues.
CDGONE patch - this very popular fix may help the drive reappear in Device Manager or My Computer/Explorer. Third party CD/DVD playing and burning software should be reinstalled afterwards. It's essential ingredient is the removal of the upper and lower filters in the registry.
Disappearing XP-CD/DVD Rom Fix program - this similar fix that may help the drive reappear in Device Manager or My Computer/Explorer. Again reinstall 3rd party software.
upper-lower-filters-removal-alone.reg - this tool fixes deletes the upper and lower filters in their most likely place, which is a common solution to fixing CD/DVD drive problems.
Resetdma.vbs - this little script will set the data transfer setting of your CD/DVD drive back to DMA which is faster and newer method than the old PIO method. This may fix drive issues.
Microsoft Autoplay Repair Wizard - Amazingly this apparently fixes some CD/DVD drive reading and writing problems.
Windows XP Patch: CD Burning Update - "This update addresses several CD burning issues that are discussed in Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 320174. Download now to prevent problems with CD burning." (Apparently this executable replaces the cdrom.inf, Imapi.exe, Imapi.sys files.) It's really a kind of useless update because it can only be applied to XP machines before SP1.
CD Recovery Toolbox - CD Recovery Toolbox - for recovering data off damaged and corrupt CD and DVDs.
Sony Rootkit Uninstaller - a few years ago, SONY released CDs that had rootkit technology designed to protect the digital rights of the music on the CD. This proved disastrous as hackers copied their methods to burrow under the Windows operating system with the same rootkit strategies that SONY used. There are still some of those Sony CDs around. The rootkit sometimes causes CD and DVD drives to not appear in Explorer or cause other issues and the uninstaller cures the issue.
SendToCD_registry_key.reg - this fix repairs the "Send To CD Drive" and "Copy to CD" shortcuts in XP".
Nero General CleanTool - many times CD/DVD issues will be caused by incomplete uninstalls of optical drive software like ones from the Nero Family. This utility does that cleaning. This might be helpful if you uninstalled Nero and that caused the problem and the removal of the upper and lower filters did not resolve the issue.
Roxio Clean Up Script - this is the same as above but for Roxio CD/DVD software clean up. Run remove.cmd then double click on roxio.reg to enter its changes in the registry. Follow the general instruction here to do a proper clean.
Windows Installer CleanUp Utility - "When you are working on your computer and installing a new program, the installation suddenly fails. Now you are left with a partly installed program. You try to install the program again, but you are unsuccessful. Or, maybe you have problems trying to remove an old program because the installation files are corrupted."