I read through a couple of the posts on here hoping this question had been asked before. Kind of, but not really. I'm running Windows XP Pro on a laptop with a Toshiba SD-R2412 combo drive. About a month ago I was prompted while using MS Word that I needed a plug-in that I hadn't installed yet. After popping in the cd and waiting for apx. 15 minutes, nothing happened and I gave up on installing the plug-in. Needless to say, since then the drive has failed to read any type of media, be it DVD, CD, blank CDR, burned CDR, etc. I didn't install any new patches for windows or the like, and right before this all happened had just burned two cds and watched a dvd. I've talked with the company who sold me this laptop (small company that sells for Sager Midern) and since I lost my warranty card when moving to college, I would have some difficulty in getting a new combo drive sent to me ("6-8 weeks" through red tape and whatnot, two weeks after my inquiry they still haven't found my invoice number). I was hoping that someone on here might have an answer; I tried a few of the remedies suggested (patches and whatnot) but to no avail. Thanks.