i have had a Gateway laptop running with Windows Vista for about 6 months now. I have had no problem with the Disk Drive up until now. Out of the blue yesterday it suddenly stopped being able to detect the presence of CDs. I have tried a number of disks and none of them have worked. When I clcik on the DVD Drive section in 'My Computer' with a CD in the laptop, it simply says 'Please insert a disk into DVD Drive (F:).'
Any help would be much appreciatedIf this is recent, Try using System Restore and restore your computer to a few days before the problem.

If that doesn't work, try reinstalling the drivers for the CD/DVD Drive.i have done both of these and they have had no effect
Any new hardware installed?
Have you downloaded/installed/run anything before it happened?

Basically, what were you doing before the problem?i took the laptop in the car and ripped some music cds somewhere else
i have done this before however
when i got it home again i turned it on and the CD drive would not work
Delete the upper lower filter of the optical drive
Follow the instructions below.

Log on to Windows by using an account that has administrator rights and PERMISSIONS. Then, follow these steps.

Step 1: Start Registry Editor
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. Registry Editor starts.

Step 2: Delete the UpperFilters registry entry
1.   In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2.   Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3.   Expand CONTROL, and then expand Class.
4.   Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5.   In the right pane (topic area), click UpperFilters.

Note An UpperFilters.bak registry entry may also appear. To delete the UpperFilters registry entry, you must click UpperFilters and not UpperFilters.bak.
6.   On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7.   When you receive the following message, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the UpperFilters registry entry:
Are you SURE you want to delete this value?
The UpperFilters registry entry is removed from the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry subkey.

Note Do not exit Registry Editor. You must have this program for the next step.
Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry
1.   In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2.   Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3.   Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4.   Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5.   In the right pane (topic area), click LowerFilters.

Note An LowerFilters.bak registry entry may also appear. To delete the LowerFilters registry entry, you must click LowerFilters and not LowerFilters.bak.
6.   On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7.   When you receive the following message, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the LowerFilters registry entry:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The LowerFilters registry entry is removed from the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry subkey.
8.   Exit Registry Editor.
Step 4: Restart the computer
If a CD recording program no longer works after you restart the computer, you must reinstall the CD recording program.

taken from

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B314060


*****If the doesnt work update the firmware of the drive****
HTHit was a physical thing to do with a connection in the drive and is working after REMOVING and carefully replacing the drive
thank-you very much for your help