text: cd drives...? one of my computers has a cd drive that will not work the way it should... i beleive it is a new 52x cd drive and it doesn't have any writing capabilities... i recently installed xp on my computer and when i did that... the drive wa working fine... but now for some reason... it won't read... the computer recognizes it's there but is not receiving any information that there is a disk in the drive... please do not respond with anything that says or realtes to 'check the cables or connections or is everything hooked up right or the right drivers' or some crap like that... yes i've checked the wires and the cables and the connections... i just would like to hear some reasons that might be the cause of this... the cd drives are usually plug and play type.you dont have to install special software to do the reading part.in case the computer respond to the drive you can see the drive's icon on the my computer screen.  you just got to get your gizmo repaired if you dont get it to work even after trouble shooting it.also try going to the control panel and searching for drives and usb gadjets attached to your pc.all the best.