My CD/RW drive is not showing on my laptop!

[oceanauk]

I have a sony vaio laptop with a CD/RW drive which is not showing up and the usual assigned drive letter is missing. When I look in the device manager it says it's disabled - however when I try to enable it I just get a message saying it can't be done with no explanation. I used an external DVD/RW drive the other day to burn a disc and since then my drive disappeared. This has not happened before but I'm guessing something has conflicted!! Any ideas please?? Many thanks!!

[alunrw]

have you checked control panel,>system>hardware>Device manager>DVD/CD Rom drives - may show you something there? otherwise why not perhaps try a restore to a date before you had this problem.