Have Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop with XP Pro SP 3. Suddenly the DVD/CD Rom drive is not working. Checked with device manager and saw an yellow exclamation mark against the DVD/CD Rom drive (PBDS DVD+-RW DS-8W1P). So, updated the driver (nothing found), uninstalled the driver and reinstalled the driver using windows add/remove hardware utility. But the yellow mark is still there. Downloaded the driver software from Dell website but it's not installing.

Any tips, suggestions ?

If the drive is not being recognised, then the drivers won't install. Try this,
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

Thank you so much, LH and Santo. It worked great. You people are wonderful. I didn't know about that MS fixit page at all. Now it's in my fav list.

This place should have some kinda mojo building tipping system to recognize the smart geeks here.