I am working on a Sony PCV-RX572 Desktop. It is running Win XP with good speed and memory. The unit has two Rom drives, a DVD player and CD-RW. Both worked but then the CD-RW stopped working. I do not know exactly when it stopped but we noted that it did not read or write. Device Manager saw it and said it was working. I uninstalled and Win found it and reset the drivers. Still the same.
Lots of things were done, even an adjustment in regedit. Still nothing. The drives were put in another machine, found and worked very well. Jumpers reversed primary and slave and still fine. The drive seems very good.
The cable is longer than usual but I found a replacement and when this was installed the earth smiled and both drives worked beautifully. BUT   when the box went home and was set back in with the printer, monitor and USB connections it all happened exactly as before. The same check steps were taken with the driver, phyically reversing the placement, cable connetion, jumpers and all else and still nothing. I even reversed the IDE 1 and 2 connection cables and the BIOS found it. WIn recognized everything and it booted well.  AND AGAIN, the CD-RW is seen but won't read or write. The machine always seems to be finding and installing correctly but the drive is not getting the word. What and how do I make a change? I have gone to Disk Management and all seems normal there with both drives.
FRUSTRATED~~~~~~~

Ignore my last post on the topic. That would apply to modems, soundcards etc. Sorry.
Have you recently installed any CD writing software ?
If you have try un-installing the software. then uninstall the CD drive in device manager and reboot.
If there was no CD writing software installed, disconnect all peripheral hardware, boot and uninstall the CD drive and reboot.

Post if either of these steps work.