Please help me stop my husband sending this computer to PC World by fixing it for him.

When I rebuilt his OS(ME) on a clean formatted drive he told me to leave the DVD drivers off because he has bought a DVD player for his TV. A couple of weeks ago he told me he had installed the DVD drivers himself and then a few days ago his CDROM drive just stopped working but he could play DVDs. I tried all sorts of CDs from Windows discs, through Office, Works, Games, non worked.

I cannot run Norton Utilities or anything else to try and diagnose the problem because, guess what, it needs a CDROM. It won't load data or music CDs and although the BIOS is set to boot from CD it won't boot from WIN98/ME/XP or Norton CDs, all of which are bootable, so reinstalling the OS won't work if I can't load a CD! When a CD is in the drive the light blinks steadily. The computer freezes if you click on my computer to try and see what the drive is showing but remember this is Windows ME we have on here!

I have had a look in Device Manager and Multimedia properties and everything points to device is working properly and I cannot see any IRQ conflicts. System Restore back to before he installed the WINDVD does not work, nor does playing around with settings in CD properties.

I have tried a lens cleaner disc and his Norton AV defs are up to date and I can see no signs of any kind of virus. I unloaded the DVD drivers in case there was a conflict but all that has done is he cannot play DVDd now either cos I cannot load them again without the CD ROM. He's getting mad at me.

I think it might be a loose cable but before I take his computer apart I would like to check because when I was trying the laser cleaner CD the mouse kept freezing and when I tapped the top of the computer the drive light went out.

Thank you.