Optical drives never require a driver when used in Windows XP OS. The OS provides native support that allows this drive to read a data or music disk and to burn a cd-r disk. The OS contains the necessary drivers. And you don't install an optical drive like other hardware, the OS installs it automatically without user intervention.
If the drive is missing from My Computer and Device Manager, then try using the procedure to fix the problem of non-detection:
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.