I purchased an external DVD burner this evening, brought it home and plugged it in, and it showed up in 'my computer' like it's supposed to. Only problem was, it had a drive letter that belonged to one of my external hard drives. I guess I should have had the external h/d's turned on when I plugged the new burner in.

I went to the control panel/administrative tools/computer management/disk management/and changed the drive letter from 'J' to 'L'. Now it doesn't show in my computer!

After I changed the drive letter, Nero recognized it as a burner, and I used it to burn a DVD, no problem there.

How do I make it show in 'my computer'?

Windows XP Home.

Boy I hope somebody can help me! I took the burner back and exchanged it for a different brand, and the same thing happened. The drive is shown in device manager as working properly, programs recognize it, it will burn DVD's, but doesn't appear in 'my computer', and won't start movie DVD's or data DVD's.

Have you tried unplugging the External DVD Writer, rebooting the computer & letting XP find the DVD Writer again? I usually leave the Drive Letter alone.

Yeah - the second one I had the ext. h/d's on. The drive letter is not a problem. I've rebooted a bunch of times.

I have an older Sony external 8xDVDRW that came with a disk with drivers... had to install the drivers BEFORE I plugged in the writer... also installed the programs is came with. Don't have a problem having the computer 'seeing' it... XP Pro SP2 installed.

cswchan - yes most people don't have this problem.

I am concerned now that Dwight will see a bunch of posts on this thread and assume I've gotten an answer.

Problem solved - kind of. The last problem is that the DVD writer won't autostart a DVD when it is inserted - I don't get that dialog box that allows me to select an action. I have to click on the icon in 'my computer' to start a movie or view the files on a data DVD.

quote:

Originally posted by GarColga:
cswchan - yes most people don't have this problem.

My apologies to cswchan. Got a little cranky there.

Most people don't have this problem because they aren't complete boneheads.

I suddenly remembered that I had Tweak UI installed - I use it to stop autoplay from scanning every time I turn on an external h/d. Sure enough, there was no tick for any of the other available drive letters. I ticked drive L and now everything shows up in 'my computer'.

Sorry cswchan - and thanks for taking the time to try and help.

None taken... just trying to help with the amount of information given @ the time...