I got my CDRW drive back today and of course, couldn't get it to work. I took it to Ty's to try it out in one of his machines, and it worked just fine. So I borrowed a power supply from him to try in my computer along with the CDRW drive, and it worked once, but after rebooting it stopped again, then started after another reboot. So I've definitely narrowed the problem down to an intermittent power problem in the drive itself, and I've emailed the company back telling them what I found out. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that when a drive works once, then simply quits working without even being touched, then begins working again in a different computer, that it may just be an intermittent problem. If they'd tested it more thoroughly, it would have saved us both a lot of time and money. As it is, I'm going to demand that they refund my shipping for this second time I have to send the same drive back.

My soundcard also mysteriously stopped working right when I put the CDRW drive in, so I'm going to see if I can get it working again tonight. If not, I'll spring for a decent soundcard rather than another $10 cheap-o one like I have now.

You sure it's not some IRQ problem? Sounds like you could have a conflict. When you say it's "not working", what do you mean exactly? Is Windows seeing it?

No, it's definitely a problem with the drive not getting power. My BIOS won't detect it at all, so of course Windows can't see it, and it won't eject when the computer is turned on. And since I've ruled out the power supply, it must be the drive itself.

Even with the ribbon cable unplugged you said it didn't eject sometimes right? If that's the case then it can only be a hardware problem of some sort.