Hoping one of you gurus might recognize this problem. I'm stumped, and googling keywords just brings up people who need to replace DVD players.

Both of my DVD drives, one of them RW, have stopped responding after Windows has been up for a length of time. If the DVD is in the drive, they work fine - so I can play a game with a DVD in when I boot for as long as I want. When I change the DVD, the computer won't recognize the new name of the DVD, and displays the disk contents as blank. Autoplay doesn't work either, presumably because the computer won't recognize the new DVD. If I reboot, everything works fine initially, even inserting new discs.

Just to add - other than a few Steam games, I have not installed anything or changed drivers, system settings, etc...

I'm a little skeptical that both drives died at once...so any thoughts?

They plugged into the same IDE or SATA controller? Driver for it might be acting wonky

If sleep/hibernate is involved that's a possible culprit. Other than that could be something to do with the ATA hookup, can you move it to a different port?

No sleep/hybernate. And the problems will begin the same evening I've rebooted.

I'll pull the case this weekend and try moving SATA ports. They're both on different cables, but I would presume it's the same controller on the motherboard?

Might be but it depends. A lot of the newer chipsets from intel and others have a SATA module built into the io chip and then a separate ATA handler with a RAID controller with separate ports, typically of a different color.

Start with the simple and work your way up. Since it is happening on both drives I am going to say it's either the motherboard (as was suggested) or a driver issue (corruption of the base Windows driver that handles CD / DVD drives, SATA controller drivers, etc). If swapping the cables isn't a quick fix, I'd look into updating your mobo / chipset drivers.

If that doesn't work, see if your motherboard manufacturer has updated firmware. Generally I consider firmware an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" thing, but it is possible that a firmware update could resolve the issue. Most motherboard manufacturers have pretty straight forward firmware update programs these days. That said, be warned that any time you're dealing with firmware you run the chance of bricking your <insert hardware piece that is having it's firmware updated> (in this case, motherboard).

I think the problem might have been related to the SM Bus Controller, which I only vaguely understand. It was showing as an error in Device Manager, and seems to be happy now that I reinstalled an Intel utility. Everything seems to be okay...