CD-ROM not working

[filthiestfis]

I'm at my wit's end. When I insert a blank CD into my CD-rom driver, it says that there is no CD inside. I have tried with several CDS and same thing always happens.

Whats going on?

[stanwixman]

Sounds like you havent got any burning software on your pc. Does the cd player on your pc recognise pre recorded disks ie soft ware or music disks etc. I had a similar problem and installed Nero and now all is fine and i can record blank disks as normal etc

[filthiestfis]

But how can this have happened?
I was burning onto CD and DVD all the time until I went on hol a couple of weeks ago.

[filthiestfis]

This is awful. I have tried to install Nero...once it got to 100% downloaded I got a pop up window saying windows installer is not installed properly...therefore Nero did not install.
Basically anything I try to install now is stopped by Windows.

[Phantaxus]

more likely to be a Windows Installer error

download a new one from here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893803

[crossroads]

Could be missing drivers. Go to command prompt* and type in without quotes: 'driverquery'. Now look down the long list and see if your CD rom drivers are registered.
*START>RUN>CMD

[Reverandfunk]

If it was working okay a couple of weeks ago, you could try a system restore.

[filthiestfis]

The system restore only goes back as far as the beginning of this month Reverend. The calendar wont allow me to go back to july!