What is the problem when you can't the drive to open at all? My friend has an HP Pavilion XP963 and her cd/dvd rom just will not open. What can we do to repair this problem?

There should be a small pinhole on the front. Unbend a paper clip and poke gently in the hole to try and open the drawer.

Happens a lot with homemade CDs... labels get stuck in the drive and won't open. The paperclip trick is the only manual way to release the drawer mechanism, but it still might not come open in a meaningful way if the label's come loose in the drawer.

Good luck.

On the other hand, replacement drive wouldn't be more than $25 so...