same problem on different DVD drives

Hi there

I'm having a problem with two different DVD drives, both of which are not being picked up in Windows XP (SP1)

They both show up on startup in BIOS, nothing is showing in WinXP

When I check the device manager, they are showing there, with the exclamation marks, getting info on these basically says that there is a problem and mentions about a corrupt or missing device driver.

I've searched everywhere I can for the device "driver" and all I keep finding is "firmware" downloads, am I missing something? or do DVD rom drives use "firmware" rather than "drivers"????

The two units are as follows (in case anyone can point me in the right direction!)

_NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-816B

Oh, and this is probably my first post of many, so hello everyone! :)

Chris.

Can your system boot from a CD-ROM? Will it boot from a CD-ROM? Have you tried updating the chipset drivers for the motherboard? Have you tried these drives in an other system? If you have access to a system running Win9x, see if you can read a CD in MS-DOS mode or booting your system with a Win9x boot disk with CD-ROM support and see if the CD-ROM works then.

thanks Prophet,

unfortunately I'm not able to get to the machine (as it is a friends Mum's PC), although I think I am correct in diagnosing it as a driver issue.

My main question is, where can I get the drivers for the DVD ROM drive?

do they still use "drivers" or is it now called "firmware"????

I cannot find drivers anywhere I look

HELP! :)