dvddrive that won't play cd's

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BigH

For some reason the dvd drive on my laptop has taken a distinct dislike to the CD format. This includes audio cds as well as CD roms. It simply refuses to recognise them even being in the drive - although it takes a fair amount of whiring before it does anything - exploring the disc in My Computer shows a blank. When I tried to burn something on to a cd it asked me to insert a disc even when there was one installed. DVDs, however, it seems to like as it happily reads them with no trouble. If anyone has the slightest idea of what's going on I'd really appreciate it. Is it more likely a hardware or a software problem?
Thanks in advance.
Regards.