HP CD Writer 8100 not seeing ANY cd in drive

[Theorum]

1.I ran the self diagnostic tests successfully.
2.I updated the firmware.
3.There is power going to the drive.
4.It is set as the master.
5.DMA is unchecked.
I don't know what went wrong. I had this running for me without any problems for some time now. I can't say exactly when this happened...I just noticed one day that it stopped working. No physical hardware changes were made, no viruses were ever found and even after I formatted my PC (for other reasons), it still doesn't recognize any cd in the drive. I could really use some help here. I can't afford to buy a new drive right now. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Theorum

[DaHazeMan]

Assuming you've tried different cd's, it sounds like a hardware problem. Did you maybe jolt the computer while the drive was reading or writing? The laser could be damaged - or it could be something small that's simply causing it to not(stop) spin(ning).