Is the drive also a cd rom or burner ? if you put in a cd like your XP CD will it open up the cd , or can you see the cd and open the dir in windows explorer ? You say you formatted the HD and I guess reinstaklled XP ( you have xp or what ? ) do you have a second cd rom drive or did you use the DVD drive ? Do you see the DVD drive in your PCs bios ? What about in control panel , system , hardware, devices...does it exist there to, no red Xs or exclamations point.?