Be sure that Windows Explorer is configured to show hidden files. That will eliminate one problem.
Then. go into your system manager to see if XP is actually seeing the DVD drive.
You didn't say if you had just installed this drive or if it suddenly quit and had been working. A little more info would help.

Not wanting to state the obvious, but the CD works in another PC, right? It's not a blank CD/DVD-R that you've inserted into the drive?
 
Lost count of the number of "D'oh!" moments I've had after many hours of pulling my hair out trying to solve a problem
 
Rgds
AndyF

The drive was working,suddenly this thing happened.
yeah the cd shows data in other pc. i have checked the option show hidden files then too the disc is blank.
any help from you guys.
appreciate your immediate response

Now you need to go into your System Manager to see if Windows is recognizing this drive. Right click on My computer, choose Properties, click on the Hardware tab, then click on the button that says Device Manager. Look at the entry that says CD/DVD rom drive and click on the "+". If there is an exclamation point, you already know something is amiss. If not, then it is seeing the drive, but the drivers may have become corrupted. You can try to update the drivers or remove the device and have windows walk you through reinstalling it.
How does this happen? Sometimes when installing software viewers for DVD's (especially when the software is older) outmoded .dll's overwrite the proper Windows .dll's causing the drive not to function with your version of Windows.

There is no exclamation point in the device manager,under +.
een tried to uninstall and windows installed the drive again but am facing the same problem. even updated the drivers.

Had you installed any new software lately? Or had you run something like Ad-aware?

I had installed sonic dvd player which i uninstalled immediately,i also have an ad ware installed recently.does this matter to the drive problem

Either could matter. When you install viewers some will use older .dll's and overwrite the default .dll's in your OS causing either software or hardware failure. You may have uninstalled the sonic player, but if it overwrote a .dll in the \Windows or \System32 subdirectory, it would not uninstall that component since it had become part of the operating OS. If you have available another working machine with a similar OS look at the dates of the files in the \Windows and \System32 directories. You might find the culprit that way.
Ad-aware is a good program. It is not infallible. When it examines the registry particularly or a "registered" value in the system and perceives it as spyware, sometimes if is making a best guess. When you strip it out, it can be the component that communicates with a particular aspect of hardware. Let's say that your sonic player put in a mssonvrtdvd.dll (name made up for illustration purposes) and substituted this value for the default in the registry which was supposed to be mscrtdvd.dll, ad-aware might tell you that this is a spyware intrusion and allow you to strip it out. You do so, but the value in the registry, despite being spyware was how your DVD drive was registered and communicated to with the rest of your system. Ad-aware does not substitute the default value and therefore, with this value gone from the registry, your DVD may no longer be registered. Ad-aware keeps a log of all things it has removed. You could go through that log to see if there is anything that was quarantined or removed that may need to be re-enstated.

i cant figure out anything in the quarantine in the ad-ware.
is there any other option left to get it fixed, should i visit a technical store to figure out a problem, will they figure it out? if u have any other option plzzplzz help me out from this.

Hi,
 
Does it show an empty disk even if there is no medium inserted? I am having exactly the same problems but i havent been installing any weird application...
 
-Andrej

Today there is a exclamation mark in the device manager, it shows an error "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)".

Hi,
 
Well Device Manager doesnt show any exclamation marks near my CD-RW... But I guess there's some kind of drivers problem... Since CD drivers are integrated in Windows I am not really shure about how to change them. I tried to choose different CD-RW manofacturer, seemed like Windows reinstalled my CD but the problem remained... Windows are showing blank CD in my drive although it is not inserted... Weird...
 
Thanks and good luck,
-Andrej