Alright, my CD drive has always worked (this is a relatively new computer).

However, today the cd drive (E:) is not present on my computer and it is not reading disks. It states in Windows Media Player that I do not have a CD drive.

The actual drive functions. It opens, closes, will read a disk for a time, but it stops functioning, presumably because of a lack of communication between the computer and the drive.

Yes, I am running Vista.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 9 2008, 2:51 pm by The Great Yam.

Have you added any other harddrives/CD-Drives, or rearranged your existing harddrives/CD-Drives around the same time your CD-Drive stopped working? Assuming you're using IDE devices, there could be problems between master/slave jumper settings.
Try reconnecting the connections on the CD-Drive. It sounds like it could just be a faulty IDE connection. Perhaps try to hook up the CD drive to another IDE channel.

There's also a possibillity that it's broken, and not possible to get working again, which would suck.. Fortunately, they're not the most expensive pieces of hardware

It actually worked on restart. I think it may have had something to do with some USB camera drivers I was trying to install.

I uninstalled them and have been doing alright.