my disc drives dont work

[Ian P]

I am running windows xp home. My disc drives no longer work. In device manager next to the drives there are yellow and black exclamation marks. I have tried uninstalling the drives but on reinstalling them i get an error message saying a problem has been encountered and the new hardware may not work properly...and the problem continues.
One of the drives was installed when i had the PC, the other was added later. They both worked until recently. When i say I have uninstalled them i mean I right clicked on them in 'device manager' and clicked on install. Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks

[pharoah]

i would turn that computer off,unplug it.then reset the bios by either the jumper,or by removing the little battery on the motherboard.just be sure to put it back.

[Alan]

In device manager, delete the relevant drivers and reboot.
The machine should pick up the drives as new devices and load the resident drivers. Once done, reboot and check, you may/proberly will need to update the drivers but check first if the exclaimation mark as disappeared.