Susan Sirois's dashboard

Something (like an Window's or iTunes update cause I haven't added or updated any other software since the drive was working properly last week) keep disabling my dvd/cd drive on my laptop. This has happened since I bought this notebook with Windows Vista on it two years ago. I've had to reformat my entire hard drive 3 times since I've owned this notebook. Reformating solves the problem but I'm tired of wiping my drive to fix the problem. Any solutions out there???? At present, I put good disks in but the drive churns and groans but doesn't recognize the disk and finally kicks it out or locks up my computer.