A internet SEARCH reveals that I am having a common problem, but all the common fixes aren't fixing this.

I am running Vista on my laptop. For the past few weeks, every time I insert a disk into my DVD Rom drive it tells me to insert a disk into drive. Doesnt matter if its a burned CD, an Audio CD or a DVD happens all the time.

I REINSTALLED the driver and even did the regedit fix. Still doing it. Not sure what else to do.

I have a Gateway T series running 32 bit Vista if that helps. Does it have any problems reading these disc's or just prompts you? You might be looking at having to replace the optical drive.+1 to DaveLembke's answer.

However, you can check if the drive functions by using a boot CD such as a windows setup disk, an UBUNTU live disk or even the recovery disks for your laptop.
If the disk boots and runs the software on the disk - great, turn the laptop off and back on, REMOVE the disk and then we can explore options from there.

If not, even after CHANGING the BIOS to boot from CD first, then the drive has failed and needs to be replaced