CD/DVD R/RW drive touble

Go to Device Manager (Right click My Computer--> Properties--> Hardware --> Device Manager) and see if there are any errors. That's what I'd do to start, but it doesn't sound good.

We'll start a club for people whose optical drives died this week. Do you want to be club prez or should I?

Note also that you can have all of the software running perfectly whilst a hardware malfunction may not show up. As it is a few years old it is a good idea to take it to your local computer shop and have it checked over. My VAIO is so old that 3/4 of the monitor has dead pixels, necessitating the use of an external monitor any time I want to use it, so I sympathize - the build quality of the thing is so good I don't want to chuck it out.

I have a Sony Vaio that is 6 or 7 years old (I think - I forgot when I bought it) and I hated having to give it up, but the hard drive was too small, the monitor is tiny, and the letters have worn off at least half of the keys. I still have it, and it still works beautifully (my kids play games on it) and when my Toshiba POS up and died without warning last month, the Vaio filled in until I could replace the Toshiba. If I could have swung the cost of a new Vaio, I'd have gotten another one.

I'm glad you got your problem solved.

Well, fine, fix your optical drive. I guess that leaves me alone with my broken one... =P