I think I busted my CD Drive!!!

[Rowena]

A few days ago I was switching computers around with my cousin.....he had bought a new computer and was giving his old one to me which is Windows XP Packard Bell.
Well we were transferring files and we deleted all of his files he had on there in My documents, videos, pics,music and took a few programmes off as well......well I wanted to install something but when I put my cd in the drive...the mouse icon started that  sand clock but then immdeiately stopped as if I had ejected the cd which i hadn't.
We have tried several things to get it going again.
System reboot, system restore, that destructive reboot as well as non-destructive but all has failed!!!!!
We looked into Drivers and saw some important files missing...gone as in they're no where.
Do we buy a new driver and install it?
We're going crazy here!!     
HELP!     

[computeruler]

Did you try a different cd?  Is it there in my computer? Go to device manager and dvd/cd-rom drives.  Are there any yellow question marks?

[Rowena]

We tried several thinking the CDs were broken!
When we go to My Computer it doesn't pick it up....whe I click on the CD drive icnon...it says 'Please insert a disk into ;E''
No Yellow questions marks.......but some of the files for the drive....you can't click into them........the icon is still there but it is faded which indicates it does not have it there.....does that make sense?

[squall_01]

Did you try a working disk that is know to work.  Some times it dont like how the disk were formatted, I ran into this issue before.  Drivers are free but if the case is the drive died then there is no real saving it.  You could try booting off the xp disk an doing a repair or a complete reinstall I had that happen before as well.

[Karnac]

Check the cables to your CD player...the flat  ribbon cable and the power cable....make sure they are secure at both ends.