For no reason that I am aware (this occured abruptly after working fine for months) of my dvd drive is either not seen on boot or when seen refuses to see that it has media loaded. It does work properly if it is the only drive on the IDE controller. I swapped out the dvd with an older one I keep as a spare and it responds the same way. I have tried them in different positions and with different jumper settings. This is under xp sp2. Under linux the dvd works properly. (duel boot system) Anyone have any suggestions as to trouble shooting or remidy My configuration prior to this was as follows. WD sata 2 500 g on sata controller wd eide 200 g primary master (and boot) either sony or nec dvd primary slave 2 slide in removable drives --wd 200 g and wd 120g which are only in computer when I am using them for back ups Asus k8 se dx MB, 2 sticks kingston 512 meg ddr 400 memory, athlon 64 3000+