My DVD drive stopped reading discs out of the blue

Hi, so I've been burning some dvds and loaded in the next dvd to burn and it the drive couldnt see that there was a disc put in. So I thought maybe the dvd was faulty and tried a few more - the dvd rw drive didnt read that there were blank dvds put in. So I put a dvd that was finished burning in and still nothing.

What happened? Worked one moment, stopped the next?

My computer still recognizes that there is a DVD drive.

yes ive tried restarting

Do not know if it will work but did work for me on another computer with Windows 7. I uninstalled the drive and driver then restarted the computer. Windows update then re-downloaded driver and the drive was reinstalled. Then my drive was again functioning.

okay ill try that, h/o...

How about Firmware for the drive? All you gotta do is open up Device Manager and click on the drive, check for new drivers.

nothing wrong with driver. did that as well.

could it be a hardware issue? it might be broken. i tried one of the dvds i burned in another computer and it didnt read, i look underneath the dvd and theres a weird smudge that doesnt change or clean off (so its not actually a smudge)

You have a Hiren's Boot CD? Link to download is in my sig. You can boot up ti Mini XP and test it in there.