My computer is a dell dimension 2400. It had a dvd drive with cd burn capability and cd read opion

A few months back my cd drive showed up in my computer as two seperate drives. It was fine for a while. One of the drives never played a thing while the other could play all formats. Now neither work. I invested MONEY in a program that claimed it fixed cd drive issues (THINKING it was drivers or something) and my cd Drive still doesn't work. Can You tell me how I can find out for free whats wrong with my drive or even better how i can FIX it. IS there a way how to know if the laser is broken?

Please any feedback would help.A new DVD BURNER which can do ALL of that and more is about $30-35 delivered from www.newegg.com
I don't know what you paid for that program that didn't work, but....

The best test for a laser is does the drive work or not. Whether the tray opens or not is irrelevant. THe optics usually go long before the mechanical functions.

I would delete the drive in  Device Manager, then reboot the machine. If it doesn't work properly go STRAIGHT for a new drive.