Cd drive not working

hi, i have a dell inspiron 1525, currently running on windows 7.

today, my cd drive stopped opening. i managed to sort this out, but it's not reading the discs. i have gone into the registry drive (i think that's what it's called) and deleting upper and lower something (sorry i can't remember the details, i was following instructions), then i uninstalled the cd rom and restarted my system.

this hasn't worked at all =/

i've only had windows 7 for a week or so, but it was uploading music and recognising discs fine as i installed new software for my computer - it's literally just broken today =/

could anyone help?
thanks x