My cd Drive wont read anything ,first of all i had to use a paper clip to open the tray because it wouldnt open.Now it wont read anything.It says in device manager that it is working properly.What could be the problem?

CDROM drives do die. To find out if the hardware is indeed dead, boot the machine with a 98SE EBD (Emergency Boot Disk - the file must be RUN to CREATE the EBD on one of your floppy disks.) Choose With CDROM support. Put a factory made data cd (Not a burnt or music CD) in the drive and try a dir command for that drive. ie; x:\dir/a/o/p where x: is the device letter assigned to the drive. If you get a reading of files, the CDROM is OK and the problem lies within windows. If you don't get a reading, the lens in the drive may be dirty. Try a CDROM cleaning disk before declaring the drive dead.

Post back with your results and O/S you're running.

Hey..i dont know what to do after i copy it to the disk anyway......i looked in event viewer and it says that theirs probably a failing cable or something id11.The tray to the cd drive still wont open unless i stick the paper clip in it,it still closes when you press the button though.What do you mean by o/s,sorry i have no idea.

Oh ok yeah sorry...i have windows xp

Well if you've tried different CD's in the drive, AND the tray won't open anymore on it's own, then I'd say it's time for a new CDROM drive.