Cd/dvd Error Message

First the computer stopped burning cd's but it would play, now it keeps giving me an error message to make sure the sims2 disc in the drive and with music it says can't play then give me the option to play in analog but that doesn't play either. What could be the problem? I have an emachines t6542 with media center edition running xp service pack 2 with amd athlon 64 processor 3500+ hard drive 160gb memory 512 mb ddr2 optical drive dvd-/+ 16x double layer format

Greetings felicia452 Sorry to hear your having trouble with your optical drive. I can understand how frustrating it can be when trying to find out why something stops working right. It will really boil down to one of two things, either the optical drive has gone bad or you have a software confusion by the operating system on how to use the drive. A new drive is about 40 bucks US and pretty easy to replace. Do you have another drive to put in to see if the problem follows on a known good drive as well? I am not an expert and as you can see as I am in training here so I cannot guarantee I can follow you through all of the necessary fixes for this problem but there are experts here who can take you farther than me. With that said, there are a couple of easy things to try to zero in on what the trouble might be that will cause no harm to your computer, data or operating system. First can the optical drive read any kind of media? a music cd? a dvd movie? a data cd/dvd? If it can do any of that it is not likey to be a Drive fault and a be a software one. Can you navigate to "my computer" and verify that there is a DVD Rom/cd present or recognized by the operating system? A good indication that its not a problem beyond the drive and the motherboard/device interface is functioning correctly. The only attempt at fix I will suggest is to navigate to the device manager and uninstall the optical device and reboot the system. Let the computer "rediscover" the device and tell you the device is ready for use. (usually notification by a message bubble near the clock on the taskbar) Then after that reboot again. After the second reboot attempt to use your dvd in the manner you wish and see if it has corrected its self. There are someother fixes to try but it puts you data and os at risk and would not attempt untill you have your data backed up. Let us know how you make out.