This post is a request for technical assistance, so if you're not a techie, you need not read any farther, unless you want to laugh at my technical inadequacy.

I recently (last Thursday) upgraded my operating system from Windows ME (UGH, BAH, FOO!) to Windows XP (YAY!). I noticed an immediate improvement in performance, but I had some compatability issues with a lot of my old software, and decided it'd be better to just do a clean, new installation of XP and then reinstall all my software.

Everything seems to be working and in order, with one notable exception: my computer no longer recognizes my DVD Rom drive. When I did the first, upgrade installation, I could still access the drive, although I couldn't get it to play DVDs despite having downloaded and installed a patch for my DVD player software. But now that I've done a complete, start-from-scratch reinstall, my computer doesn't even see the DVD drive any more.

I thought perhaps I could go in under the control panel and "remove" the device in question, and then let Windows find it again upon restart, but I'm not even sure that's possible. Either it's not there, or I'm not familiar enough with XP to be able to find it.

I called my tech support line from the store where I bought my computer, and was told that they can only help if I go back to Windows ME and then if it still doesn't recognize the drive, then they can help me out. GRAH! INFIDELS!

Can anybody help?

Gri"baffled"shny