I recently replaced the hard drive in my 3 year old HP notebook. The original HD was an IBM Travelstar 20 gig and the new HD is an IBM Travelstar 40 gig. I am not sure if this is related to my problem but note it here just in case. After reloading my OS with factory provided restore discs as well as downloading other freeware such as hijack this and ad-aware se, my Sony CD-RW DVD combo drive will not read data or audio cds. It reads them as being blank cds and after the auto-run starts the box asking me what I would like to do with the inserted blank cd pops up. DVDs however play perfectly in the system. Obviously the drive was working when I reloaded my OS with the factory restore discs. I ran hijack this once after installing to establish an ignore list of installations on the restore that are not a regular part of my Windows XP Home but I have not deleted anything. I have upgraded the driver, un-installed and re-installed the drive, downloaded Windows updates (SP-1 and 2 and other patches) amongst other suggested solutions and have restored the computer back to when I first re-installed the OS all to no avail. The only thing I have not done is a complete reload of the OS. I have seen some solutions that speak about BIOS updates and configurations and HD partitions but they are in response to problems similar to mine but not exactly the same thing. I am reluctant to try those without more info. I am at this point thoroughly exasperated. I want to reload some picture and audio files as well as reload Office XP on my machine but can't. Please help. Any suggestions?