youfoundjake - 7:47 pm on Aug 31, 2008 (gmt 0)

Maybe a windows update hosed something, I've seen that happen.
Is there no NIC on the motherboard?
What you could try is to boot into safemode, go to device manager, uninstall the cd drive (if it is still not working) reboot the computer, hopefully the cd-drive will be auto-detected after a normal reboot, put the driver disk in, copy to a folder on the desktop, shut down, put the network card in, reboot, see if the network card is detected, and if not, point to the folder that contains the drivers, and at the same time see if the cd rom is working.
Then reboot, and you may have your network card working, then work on the cd rom by going to device manager, updating the drivers, which then checks Microsoft's site, or if you know the maker, go to their site and look for updated drivers...

Outside of all this, am I correct in understanding that the cd drive and wireless card have both been installed for two years, and now they are not working?

If so, what has changed recently? Windows updates? Software installation? (something like Roxio which I have seen blue screen a sony cd drive)

What does your event viewer say?
Did you install SP3?