Driver issue. The issue was the raid controller drivers. Updated them and it worked fine. Odd. I didn't expect that to affect an optical drive, but then again, I'm a RAID virgin.
Update: System specs in my sig - this is the DVD drive in question:
SONY DVD RW DW-G120A ATA Device
I don't know if this has any significance - there is one alert in the Device Manager under Storage controllers: GIGABYTE GBB36x Controller. "Windows cannot start this hardware device because...
The other day got a new computer, installed Server 2008, and made it into a nice little workstation. Where the DVD drive worked initially, now it doesn't. It shows up in the boot screen and BIOS, the computer recognizes the model, that it exists and is plugged in. But when the OS loads, nothing...