How do I get my Sony Viao to recognize my optical drive?

thats weird… If you havnt got anything to loose, reinstall again. Should do the trick unless the drive is faulty/loose

That is the common problem,on XP,when You uninstall some Rip/Burn program.The easiest way is to download some shareware Burning program (or if you have on USB Flash,..),and install it-and the problem would be solved.

Do you have the correct drivers for the laptop? If you don’t have to much stuff on it, you could try a re-installation of XP. If you want to try re-installing the driver go to: http://b2b.sony.com/b2bMicrosites/landingpage/vaio_drivers/download_vaio_drivers.html… and find your model, then download the correct drivers.

Go to
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

Good luck

thanks everyone! main problem was that i couldn’t reinstall windows if i didn’t have an optical drive… fortunately the sony website had a section where i could reinstall features that came stock on the computer… so it’s all good now. but you have all been so helpful, this is why i love fluther.