Weird DVD Burner with Windows 7 Problem - Any Advice?

SATA order should not matter your are right on that. What motherboard are you using? Have you got the latest BIOS for it?
Shouldnt be any jumpers on it to matter I dont think. Try a different SATA cable and different power connecter. Other than that I have no idea.

Feist is awesome btw

Thanks for the reply anort3, because I think you inadvertently solved the problem

The motherboard btw is a GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard.

Now, I decided to reboot and check my current BIOS, I did and at the start of POST I hit the eject button just to give it another try. The power didn't light up. So I shut down and checked my modular PSU. Turns out the connector wasn't snapped in all the way on the PSU side. I snapped it in, booted and it works just fine.

So the problem had to do with the order in which the SATA drives were connected to the mobo, but only in Win7. No idea why though. Doesn't make sense to me, but here's what happened.

-DVD Drive #1 works fine w/ 2 HDDs as #2 connected device in XP
-DVD Drive #1 power lights up, Device Manager sees it but no disc recognition or ejecting in Win7
-Swap for DVD Drive #2, same issues
-Swap DVD Drive #2 from SATA position #2 to #1
-DVD Drive #2 doesn't work, but I was not paying attention. If I did, I would've seen the power not light up. I seemed to have dislodged the modular PSU cable when I reached in to swap the SATA cable position last night.
-Snap in PSU cable, all is right in the world.

Thanks again. Now off to be late for work.