hi
a friend of mine (housemate actually) has run into a problem with his computer, about a month ago his CD-ROM stopped working properly, it doesnt appear in the windows my computer or anywhere else, it wont read discs at all, but it will eject and close like it should, i've tried uninstalling it thru windoze but it still doesnt work

the error i get from xp pro is that the registry could be corupt or hardware could be damaged, im thinking it could be the data cable not being plugged in properly, or just loosened a bit, im not afraid of fiddling with it, but just wondering if anyone on here has any ideas as to what might be the problem, we did do a virus scan which came up with nothing (its a month out of date though...)

considering that, are there any viruses which are relatively new that can cause this or is it most likely to be the data cable to the drive itself?

[edit]forgot to mention a couple of tiny details, its an IDE drive and it has previously worked fine, its only a recent occurence[/edit]

suggestions or ideas greatly apprciated

MrLeachy