I have a CD-R and a DVD-R in my computer. When trying to burn a DVD sometimes the computer will only recognize the CD-R drive. I know the DVD drive is hooked up because I can play DVDs through it, but I can’t burn them. Does anyone know why this is?
I have a similar problem with a new SATA HD I’ve connected to my computer. I have two other PATA drives, and those are always recognized, but the SATA HD doesn’t show up about 50% of the time. I believe it’s based on the drive’s power-up time. I’m guessing that because I can see from the Boot screens (before XP starts) whether or not the SATA HD has been detected. If it hasn’t, I can hit the reset button on the computer and restart the boot sequence, and 99 times out of 100, it will now detect the SATA HD.
I’d watch your boot-up sequence and see if the DVD drive is being detected on every bootup. Then see if the boot up results correspond to your problem with using the DVD drive in Windows.