I am using Windows XP. 256 Ram 40g and 80g hard drives. One Polaroid
DVD-R and a Dony 52 x /24/52x CDR. Both are fairly new. Working fine
until a few days ago. Apparently a "switch monster" invaded my PC and
turned them both off. What do I do to get them turned back on?

Go to properities, check if they are enabled, if not, enable it by
selecting Enable This Device. Also, open your box, un-plug one of the
wires on the back and plug it back, restart your computer and it
should say "New Hardware Detected" if you are using Windows XP. If
not, hope you still have your Windows XP disk cause I have some
instructions:
1. Put your Windows XP disk in.
2. Restart your computer
3. F8 at the beggining, should be (Boot Disk) or such.
4. Hit CD-R/DVD-R
5. Should start up a bluescreen (Windows XP).
6. On the first menu, hit Enter.
7. Policies, click F8 to "I agree"
8. Should go to partition, hope you remember what drive your WINDOWS
folder was located at (normally NTFS) cause you need to click Enter on
that drive. If it asks to countinue, continue.
9. It should start deleting files and re-copying files from your windows XP disk.
10. If you get a error, can't copy in the middle, take your disk out,
blow on it and put it back in and hit continue.
11. When it is done, it will go to the setup page which you have to
setup 3 easy options (Users, Network and Activiation Code).
12. You are done!

*NOTE* You don't lose any files except /WINDOWS is re-created and
registeries are deleted.

~Kool Aid
Aiding you the Kool way!

Run regedit and Go to :

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VXD\IOS 

Look on right hand screen for NoIDE and delete it, if found

Thank You for your help.
I found a way that was staring me in the cyber face. Go to System
Restore and follow the prompts.