I have a gateway computer, My computer is saying please insert a disk when there is one in there, it won't accept any of my cd's or dvd's. Also is my disk drive supposed to say drive I? How do I get my computer to accept my cd's and dvd's, my computer is about a year and 3 months old, it started not accepting my disks 6 months ago please help me!!

Version of Windows (XP, Vista etc)? The following should apply to Windows XP, but may apply to Windows Vista as well.

Which disk is listed as I: (Optical drive, external drive or an internal hard drive)?

Is there a "My computer" icon on the desktop? If so right click on the "My Computer" Icon and click "Explore" on the resulting context menu. Does the optical (DVD/CD) drive appear in the left pane of the Explorer window?

Click "Properties" in the "My Computer" context menu. On the "Hardware" tab of the "System Properties" pop-up click the "Device Manager" button. Is your optical drive listed under the "DVD/CD-ROM drives" category on the "Device Manager" pop-up?

Hey mangel,

The Optical Drive(CD/DVD Drive) can have any letter. The reason it chose the letter I is because you may have a card reader or more than one hard drive installed in your computer. Your optical drive is one of the last drives to receive a letter at boot up.

In terms of why it says to "Insert CD into drive I:", this means it's looking to either finish an installation of a piece of software, or you removed a disc before shutting down a particular program.

Try restarting your desktop/Laptop and see if that fixes the problem.

If it hasn't , then it's likely you haven't finished installing a software package.

If you haven't installed software within the last 6 months through the optical drive, you may have a virus, or your optical drive is on its way out.

You can purchase a new optical drive from any of your major retail stores for around $40(desktop).if you're unsure how to install it, get a technician to do it for you.

Best of luck to you,
--Matty