No longer recognized: SH-S183L Lightscribe WriteMaster DVD burner

Why doesn't my system even recognize that there is a drive attached now? After I reinstalled a new copy of Win7 Pro, this optical disk drive could read media but not burn to a blank disk. Also of course the Lightscribe labeller didn't work because I assume the Win7 drivers only support basic disk read functions, which is understandable. Before installing the Lightscribe software though, I just went to the Samsung site, found the firmware upgrade and chose the _SB03 version. After allowing that program to run and appear to install drivers, it asked me to restart. Upon doing so, the drive is completely dead as if there was no power to it. It's not listed in the Device Manager. After restarting a couple times, attempting to install the _SB01 version of the Samsung software, which would not install and reports that no drive is found, then enabling the "Hot plug' feature in BIOS of the SATA connectors on my ASUS P8P67 mother board, still nothing. What gives?