A few days ago my Cd drive stopped working on my PC.
The light still comes on and it opens and closes but thats it - it is the only cd drive on my computer.

When i went to device manager there is a little yellow symbol with an exclamation mark on the drive and the note reads " Windows Successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but can not find the hardware device ( code 41) "

I opened my computer and put in a new cd drive but the same message is appearing so i know that the cd drive is working ok.

My PC is not connected to the net so cant download anything etc.

Any ideas??

Check the lead is plugged into the motherboard properly and if possible try a different lead.

And/or - try uninstalling the device in device manager, shut down your PC, unlpug the CD, start up your PC, shut down again, plug it back in and restart.

If the machine has two bays, try it in another slot. But otherwise, totally remove it/uninstall it and start afresh as suggested.

It's all about uninstalling rebooting and intalling with Windows. Someone had a similar problem a few weeks ago I think and that's all it took.

And i will be able to uninstall, reboot and install it through windows without any CD, Internet etc?

thanks for help by the way

Yes.

once you remove the cd drive from the system, windows should detect it anew and install the appropriate drivers that come with XP