CD Rom drops from My Computer

Hello, not sure if this is a hardware related problem or windows. I have an older computer, HP Pavilion XT953 and it came with an HP CD-Writer Plus. I bought a Lite-On CD/DVD Model LDW-411S. I've been running XP for quite awhile and recently my CD Roms have been giving me fits. I originally had problems with the HP cdrom cause the computer would recognize it one time and then it would disappear from My Computer. So i just removed it and used my Lite-On for about 3 months. Well recently the Lite-On started doing the same thing so i went out and bought a nice cable thinking the IDE cable was bad. Didn't solve my problems. I had been having problems with XP, so i went to do a Repair using the XP Cd. It would give me errors when extracting the files from the CD stating that it couldn't locate certain files, with drivers.cab doing this everytime. The CD would speed up, then slow down and stop and then speed up....it did this repeatedly. So i couldn't get a good XP install and i finally put in my HP cdrom back in and i got a good install but it took about 5 hours to extract the files!!!! Seemed it was on turtle mode, cause it normally takes 1/2 hr to completely install windows and maybe 5 minutes to extract the files. So here i am with a "supposedly" good windows install and my HP cd-rom is still not responding. I can unplug the power from the CD rom and plug it back in, go into Device Manager and search for hardware changes and it will recognize the CD-Rom. The tray ejects and operates CDs fine but then a little while later it disappears from My Computer and the eject button won't work. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction, other than a new computer I'll be building one in about 6 months but i still need to burn DVD/CDs in the mean time.

 

They are on separate cables, so i'll try hooking them to a single cable. Currently the jumper on the CD rom is set to master.

 

In the device mgr i have tossed the offending device in the trash can. Rebooted the computer and XP finds the drivers and installs it . If you have a confict it will show it's face in this scenario. you will be given choices of drivers and it is my guess the wrong drivers are being used on the wrong devices.