i have recently ran a system restore, making my pc back to its factory settings, but when the system was restored, i found that the dvd r drive was no longer there, so i went to device manager to find the ! mark over the device and foung the error code
Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)
i then checked all wires were in place, and rebooted, still no good, so i then unplugged the wires and put them back it, windows recognised the device, but still after about 10 seconds i found the ! mark and the same error,

any1 have a clue how to get it working?

thanks

Yup it sounds like the same error I got. This MS support article did the trick for me and another user on here

You can no longer access the CD drive or the DVD drive, or you receive an error message after you remove a CD recording program or a DVD recording program in Windows XP: "error code 31"