Why will my computer not read discs

[cazp]

My computer will not read any cd's music or other? any ideas. They used to start automatically but now it wont read them at all. Also the computer is very slow on original start up. How can I speed it up? or find out what programs start automatically when I turn the computer on. Tried de-frag etc but no better

[alunrw]

Have a look at what's running at start up - go to Run and type in msconfig, untick the items that you dont want to load at start up (theyll still work) - as regards the CD it could be a problem with the laser(My CD rewriter laser went the other day).
I would then restart to see if this speeds things up - if so then to try and resolve the CD problem ,if youve got the back up discs (you might not need them if its windows XP) you could try deleting the CD drive from your system (Control panel,system,hardware, device manager) and then shut down again and restart - on this re-start Windows will find new hardware (Your CD ) and install the software (this is why you may need the back up discs for drivers possibly) - if this still doesnt work it could be the drive is faulty and you might need a repair/replacement (Theyre not that expensive)