You don't install an optical drive.... Windows XP installs it for you. An optical drive is not like other hardware that requires a driver. XP also doesn't notify you when the drive is installed. You won't even know it has been installed until you look in My Computer and see it listed there. If it's not then you have a problem that must be corrected first. The most common cause of an optical drive not appearing in My Computer is because of a registry quirk that's very common to Windows XP.
If your problem is non-detection, 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.
Once this registry fix has been performed, reboot the machine and the drive should now appear in My Computer as well as Device Manager.
If you have a problem other than non-detection, you need to tell us about it.