Vista - No Disk in Drive Burner Not Found

I have a Gateway notebook ML6703 a little over a year old. Vista 32 bit.
When I put a cd for software or a DVD into the drive nothing happens. I can
hear it loading but then the pointer doesn't display the little disk that it
should. Windows Media Center tells me there's no disk in the drive. When I
try to burn photos from gallery to disk it tells me "You don't have a disk
drive capable of burning files to cd or dvd. Media player tells me I need to
connect a burner. DVD Burner Not Found. Around April 13 or 14th I
downloaded a new HP Printer and the software downloaded fine. Now when I put
something in the drive it doesn't think there is anything in there.
The drop down list for choosing a burner is blank....what happened?
I've spent the last 3 or 4 days trying to figure out what happened, and
reading discussion group.
I would also like to know if the recovery disk that came with it erases
everything or can I choose what items to re install.
Gateway has downloads for my notebook, but I don't know which ones I should
use to maybe fix this problem.

"sarat" wrote:
Also I just found in Program Uninstall Fix or Change in Control something
called Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515/xx12 drivers and it appears to be
uninstalled already. I don't know if this is part of Vista or not.

"sarat" <sarat@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7621FB89-F95D-4A53-AD21-EDBD444B0D14@xxxxxx
It sounds like the drive itself may have gone bad. Have you asked Gateway
support to help you determine if the drive is OK?
Try this as a first test. In Device Manager, uninstall the drive, then
reboot. Is the drive rediscovered?

"PvdG42" wrote:
Also I found software in PROGRAMS called Power2go by Cyberlink, Do I need
that or maybe it is taking over the software that came with the computer? I
had that problem with the Audio Device....every once in a while there was an
X over the volume control and Windows told me "No Audio Output Device" I went
into Programs and found Sigma Tel Audio Driver. Then I went to their website
and re-downloaded it. This happened several times. Finally, just this
morning I searched problems for Audio and found someone else with this
problem. The suggestion to him was to uninstall Sigmatel and the original
sound program should reinstall itself....and it WORKED! I don't even know
where that Sigmatel came from. I wonder if the same problem could be
happening with my DVD drive. Sorry for this being so long, but I thought it
might be important.
Again, just exactly what do I uninstall to try to fix this problem?

Thanks!