DVD Drive Problems on a Acer Acerpower FH-EC3520P -- HELP

I have a computer, the description below is copied from the invoice:

Acer Acerpower FH-EC3520P Intel Desktop Computer - Intel Celeron D 352
3.20GHz, 512MB DDR2, 80GB SATA, Dual Layer DVDRW, Intel GMA 3000
Graphics, Gigabit LAN, Windows XP Professional

It has SP2

It's my wife's computer. A few days over a year old. I upgraded the
memory to 2 GB shortly after I got it.

Anyway, the DVD drive quit working. Would not recognize any CD or DVD
placed into it. IT showed there was nothing there.

I un- and re-installed the drivers. Didn't help.

BIOS settings look good. I tried removing the CMOS battery for a
minute in case it had something messed-up that I could not see. That
didn't help.

I swapped the IDE data cable. That didn't help. This machine only
has one IDE header on the motherboard, so couldn't try a different
one.

So I figured the DVD drive had died (it does happen). Bought a new
LITE-ON model DH-20A4P08C. Figured it would be as generic as
anything. That didn't help.

I bought an external 5.25 USB case and put the drive in it. XP
automatically installed it, and it showed the new drive in "My
Computer," but it would not recognize any CD or DVD loaded in it.
Shutting down and restarting the computer didn't help

So I drug the external case with the drive over to my computer, a
home-built box with an ASUS MB and an AMD processor. Plugged it into
a USB port and XP went through the auto-install. At the end, it
advised me that I had to re-boot to finish the installation. That
didn't happen on my wife's machine. After reboot, it works great.

I will appreciate any help I can get.

Neal
Neal

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