[dphifer74]

Apparently, as I was trying to create more space on my hard drive, I accidentally deleted or "corrupted" the device drivers for my Hitachi LG DVD-ROM drive as well as my Samsung CDRW/DVD drive. I've tried downloading firmware for both, but consistently see this in the Device Manager: "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing." I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling both devices, also tried a System Restore. So far nothing has worked. Please help as I am pulling out every strand of my hair.

[frankjohn]

Go to device Mgr. & uninstall your drives, re boot and windows will recognise the drives

[frankjohn]

Im sorry i see you have tried this

[dphifer74]

I found a thread where someone had a very similar problem. I had looked prior to posting this, but apparently overlooked it the first time. The suggestion was to copy and paste this:
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"UpperFilters"=-
"LowerFilters"=-

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdr4_2K]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdralw2k]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdudf]

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UdfReadr]

into a notepad file with the name fixcd.reg and then double-click on the file. The first attempt was unsuccessful. However, when I tried uninstalling and reinstalling again, both devices were found and are working fine...so far (cross fingers). Thank you for your time and advice.