Laptop Won't Read Discs

[Punisher Rising]

My Gateway MT6460 Laptop apparently isn't reading discs anymore for some reason. I was ripping some footage from my DVDs earlier for a video project I'm doing and ripped one DVD last night fine with no problems at all, but about an hour or two or so later when I tried to rip another, it wouldn't even read it and my laptop's DVD/CD player was making strange sounds like it was trying to read/load it but couldn't. I tried it again just now but it still did the same thing and to test it further I tried with another DVD and a CD, but I got the same problem. I'll speak with a Gateway tech later about this (right now their support lines are closed as I type this).

What could be the cause of this? I've been looking up on laptops not reading discs and from what I've read, installing a new driver might help. I also wonder if completely re-doing my computer to it's factory settings might help, which is what I plan to do within the next week or two, anyway. Any help for this is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

 

[<(o_o)>]

How old is the computer? Maybe the disc drive is just wore out & you should replace it or get an external disc drive & use that instead.

 

[Punisher Rising]

Had it since August 2007.

If I have to get an external disc drive, two questions about it: 1, how much do they cost and 2, can I use it like a built-in disc drive that plays/writes DVDs, CDs, etc.?

 

[Spider-Man Luvr28]

That happened to my old laptop. Stopped working for some reason so instead of wasting a couple hundred bucks on replacing the disc drive, I bought an external drive for like $30 and everything worked out.

 

[Punisher Rising]

$30 for an external drive's not too bad, and I've looked at some online, some are as low as $25. If nothing works out for my laptop's internal drive I think I'll pick up an external one.