I have an HP laptop, and I've been trying to either listen to music or watch a dvd, and it won't read anything. My OS is Vista, and the only answers I can find on here for people with the same problem are running XP. So please help!

Does the drive appear under My Computer? That is, does Vista even realize you have an optical drive installed on the computer.. If not, that's a good place to start - Check in the device manager to see if it is listed, but not working. If it's not there at all, eject the drive from the bay and re-seat it so Windows Vista can re-detect it.

If Vista does see you have a drive, what happens when you put a CD in the drive? Do you hear it spinning up? Does the drive make reading noises like it's trying to read the disc, but just can't? If that is the case, either the drive is bad, or the particular media your trying to read is bad. Make sure you try a few different CD's or DVD's so you know it's not limited to just one or two discs.