Laptop DVD drive not working

My laptop (Windows XP) has stopped playing cds and dvd's - doesn't recognise anything I put in, just spins around for a bit then nothing comes up.

Have looked in the Device Manager and it says..

Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

So it's not the driver.. and the troubleshooter doesn't help - says I already have adequate hardware... just seems to have gone missing!! Bums.

Any ideas how/if I can fix this?
Thanks.