Hi, i've got a laptop with a pentium 3 and 256mb of ram. My problem is that the cd/dvd rom drive can't read any cd, it only reads dvd's. I don't understnad why this happened and i wanna know if i have to change the unit or if it can be fixed. I've done everything since formatting to update the firmware and cleaning the unit but it still only can read dvd's without any problem. Please anybody help me.

I had a desktop unit doing the same thing and was told by Newegg that a DVD rom has 2 lasers, one for CD and one for DVD. Your CD laser is probably gone. That was the one that went on mine. Could possibly need cleaning. You can buy a special cleaning disk.

thats what i once thought but i took mine apart (no longer worked of course) and it only had 1 laser

I don't know. Maybe there is one lense with two lasers behind. Just relaying what I was told. Made sense to me because I have read about different wavelength lasers for different applications. The Next generation of DVD is supposed to be using a blue laser. This is a smaller wavelength, and therefore can write to smaller target, therby increasing the arial density. To carry that analogy over to CD/DVD media, it makes sense that the wavelength must be different. The density is of six times as much. Anyway, if a lense cleaner doesn't work I think you are going to have to replace that drive.