DVD player & CD-R not showing up in 'My Computer'

I installed windows XP around Christmas and it appeared to be working OK. Over the last 2 months my DVD & CD-R icons have intermittently disappeared from the My Computer display. I am running a Pentium II Gateway system that originally had windows 98 on it. My CD-R is a Philips 3610, the DVD is only referred to as an 'IDE'.
When this first happened I would go into My Computer, and the icons for the D & E drives would be missing, I re-booted, and they would come back. This happened more frequently, with less times they would come back after re-boot. Now I cannot get the icons to show up at all, but sometimes when I put a CD in the CD-R the auto-play feature of windows xp will let it play.
Anybody got any ideas where my drives went?

 

You should probably export the key before you delete it, in case you need to restore it.


Restoring Access to CD ROMs
If you removed CD Burning software, or for some other mystical reason, can not longer access your CD ROM's,
in most cases following registry keys needs to be deleted:

Locate and delete the UpperFilters and LowerFilters values under the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

 

Blackstar3

You might give This site a try.

Select XP fixes and look in the second column for "Restore CD/DVD Drives to Explorer ".

Download and follow instructions.