Goodfella

Not able to tonight, but could try tomorrow. Thanks.

Dalo Harkin, Yes, checked 'device manager' and no yellow exclamation marks. The device is showing in 'Disk Drives' as 'USB to IDE/SATA Device'.

The USB device has a mains power supply, hence possibly why i can open/close the tray. If the top link in my OP isn't working, go to DealExtreme: Cool Gadgets at the Right Price - Site-Wide Free Shipping (Page 1) and type 474 in the search box and you'll see the device i'm talking about.

Hi, It's a 3yr old medion laptop running XP Pro. Will get model number later. When i plugged it in last night, the only thing to show-up was a USB Mass Storage Device in device manager, but no DVD drive even though i can open/close the tray. The instructions say jumper must be set to Master which i've tried and also the driver installation cd is not required for XP or Vista.

I bought one of these: DealExtreme: $16.44 USB SATA/IDE Cable Set to run one of these on my laptop: Play.com (UK) : NEC Optiarc AD 7173A DVD-RW 18x/18x/12x Internal IDE Bare Drive with LabelFlash Technology / Beige : Computing - Free Delivery but it isn't detected in 'my computer' and i've tried all the different jumper settings. There is enough power to the DVD-RW drive, as i can open and close the tray. Can anyone help?