Optical drives never require a driver when used in Windows XP. An optical drive is installed automatically by the os... not by manual installation like other hardware, using a driver. Windows does not provide any notification of it being installed either. In fact you won't know it until you look in My Computer or Device Manager or Windows Explorer and see it listed there.
Is the drive listed in My Computer?
If not, please read post #24 in this thread:
http://forums.driverguide.com/showth...t=21669&page=4
It contains instructions on the
delete the upper and lower filters fix
Also, there is a STICKY posted in this forum that contains a file from Microsoft and instructions that will do this registry edit automatically instead of having to do it manually.
And here's another method that will do this automatically for you if you're afraid to edit the registry manually.