disc drive is not reading CDs

Just out of nowhere my CD drive stopped reading CDs. It doesn't even say that there is a disc in the drive, doesn't recognize it at all. I went to the device manager and tried uninstalling it and then reinstalling it but it still didn't fix anything. Is there a way to fix this without having to get a new CD drive?

Is this a laptop or a desktop? Laptop drives are easy to clean, desktop drives need to be taken out and opened up to clean. Its possible that a cleaning could fix the problem. However, it is probably just a bad drive and time to replace it.

it's a laptop drive, but the computer is only two years old, if that, and the CD drive was barely everrr used.

Yeah its more likely a bad drive. When you were in device manager was there a yellow exclamation point on the CD-Rom drive? It is very simple to try and clean the lens on the CD-Drive in the laptop. You can damage it if not careful, but you don't have much to lose here do you? Open the CD-Drive tray and find the lense near the center of the drive. Take a Q-Tip and dip it in some rubbing alcohol. Push the tip against the side of the alcohol bottle to squeeze out any extra alcohol. You don't want it dripping. Now, take and gently rub the lense with the wet side of the Q-tip. Use a circular motion, and use very little down force. The lens floats on "springs" and it can be damaged by pushing on it too hard. It will move while you are cleaning it and that is why you have to be careful. Flip the Q-tip over and dry the lense with the other side of the Q-tip. For only two years, if you aren't a smoker, it is highly unlikely it is a dirty lense. When you put a disc in the drive, put your ear down by the drive. Listen for several seconds, see if you hear the disc spin up and make a whirling noise. You may hear some brief, low-speed spinning, but if it doesn't spin up fast with a high-pitched whirl it isn't recognizing the disc and you can be sure the drive is bad.