You either had a really obscure, obsolete, discontinued CD Rom or you didn`t search hard enough for a driver.
No, I had a Hewlit Packerd, less than 1.5 years old, and there were no patches for it that matched the WIN2000/ NT technology! Neither did my read/write software match, either!
The CD did work, but to do anything else with it, that was my problem. You're right, the CD did read, but all the cd read/write stuff is what died, I should have thought that through before I answered! :-)