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This is my first message... HELLO!

I have an older del GX240 and my cd rom makes noise like it is running but, it won't read the cd's... It seems to be a problem with the windos driver I have tried to uninstall then reinstall the hardware but the problem does not correct. When looking in my computer area it doesn't show the E drive. But, again if I put a cd in it will start up or makes noise like it is working but, NADA! It is an LG-CD ROM CRD-8482-B. I use Windows 2000 pro. Any heroes out there?

HELP!

It's more likely that the cd rom drive had just worn out!! New ones are very cheap these days!!

It could also be due to a loose connection inside of the computer. Welcome !

Does it show up in the Device Manager? If so, is there a yellow symbol next to it?

Yes, it does show up in the device manager and has a yellow flag... I attempted to remove it and then let the system find it at start up and it does, and allow windows to put in the resident driver, since I can't find it on line and I can't load it or replace the driver with a cd.

Thanks... any suggestions.

cd/dvd drives don't have their own specific drivers, unless given by the manufacturer. They use Window's standard/generic driver to work.

Let ti try and find the a recommended driver for it. If still fail i think it may be time to get a new one...

Yes, optical drivers are supplied by Windows. If yours turn out to be corrupted somehow, a reinstallation of Windows would fix that. However, before doing that, is there anything else with a yellow symbol next to it like under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers? If so, try uninstalling the channel (primary or secondary) that the optical drive is connected to and let Windows reinstall it upon rebooting. See if that helps.

CD and DVD drives are nowadays infested with failure prone components. There can be two different lasers. Some have a rubber-like drive belt. Some have very poorly manufactured motors. Once upon a time, they could make a CD Drive that would last five years. No longer. It is a part that needs to be replaced annually if used often and ever two years if never used. You can remove the bottom and top covers of the drive to see if the belt has slipped off, but if broken is is nearly impossible to find the right replacement.
A big help is http://aumha.org.reg3.htm
However, they are so inexpensive, and simple to replace, it is to your advantage to R&R them every so often. You can get a CD drive for $10. CDRW for $21 to $30. (Wal-Mart's is $29.95). DVD-RW are $37 at Wal-Mart.
If your time is worth anything, and you have had the drive for 9 months or more, just replace it.

If it shows up as a yellow triangle in device manager then it is most likely that the chipset on board the drive has fried. I have seen this happen many many times.

If you have a live linux distro, or really any bootable cd (one that requires more reading than just a memtest disk is better) you can see if anything on the hardware level is bad.

This should always be tested with suspected bad drives before anything rash like buying a new drive or reinstalling Windows. I'd hope if you reinstalled Windows that at some point during the installation you'd wonder how the drive is suddenly working.

A quick change out of the optical drive will verify whether that extreme rarity is the cause.

To what are you referring to as an extreme rarity raybay??

That the chipset on the motherboard is fried... as a cause for the failure.

Raybay, you need to learn to read things properly.
My post numbr #9 said absolutely nothing what so ever about motherboard chipset.
If you have a good read of what I said you should notice that I said "drive chipset".

Thanks for the repsonses!