My CD-Rom Tray Isn't Working

My computer isn't detecting anything that I insert into my CD-Rom tray. I've got all sorts of software that is capable of playing a CD (Musicmatch, Windows Media Player, Real Player, Creative Soundblaster) but none of them work. When I put a CD in, it sounds like it's struggling to detect something, but then just gives up. Very frustrating, considering I just had a new Memorex CD-Rom drive installed less than a year ago.

Incidentally, when I double click on My Computer>D Drive, A little window pops up that says "D:\is not accessible. The device is not ready." Whatever that means. It was working fine a couple of days ago.

 

IDLERACER--Can you access Device Manager? Does it indicate problems with the CD-ROM drive (like an exclamation mark on a yellow triangle)? (Perhaps you will first have to right click on the CD-ROM name|Properties to see that.)
Does that give any hints as to what is wrong?
With luck it could be fixed following the suggestions here
http://www.deinmeister.de/cdrep_e.htm
If no obvious hints as to the problem or how to fix and cleaning does not help, again in Device Manager, can you right click on the CD-Rom drive and Uninstall from there? Upon reboot the drive hopefully will be correctly recognized, drivers installed and work again.
If no joy, are you still in the warranty period?

 

I don't think it is a physical problem with the drive, just a problem with Windows seeing/reading it.

I would go to Device Manager, click the "+" on CDROM, click/highlight the drive and click the Remove button. When you reboot it will be automatically reinstalled.

If that does not work, open the case (tower), disconnect the two (major) cables to the drive. Startup and boot into Windows. Shutdown and reconnect the cables.

If you have a recent version of Windows Media Player and ask it to "burn" music to a disk, but only have a CDrom drive, this can happen.

Matt