I was recently given a Dell Inspiron 1525 to fix. The CD drive was not working. I am not going to discuss the multitude of causes or methods to troubleshoot this issue. I am simply going to provide the solution that worked for me.
1. Temporarily remove any CD burning software.
2. Edit your registry. Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
and delete “Upperfilters” and “Lowerfilters” values if they are present.
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060)
3. Remove the CD-ROM driver from device manager.
4. Reboot the computer and reinstall the CD-ROM driver.