dvd drive disappeared - Also can't boot cd anymore

Hi.
I have a dell inspiron 1720 laptop with vista 32 bits. Today I tried to see a DVD and it didn't work. So, I open the file explorer and noticed that the name of my dvd drive was a little different. It wasn't showing DVD+-RW anymore. It was cd plus something I don't remember.
My first action was to try to roll back the driver in windows device manager, but this option was not available, just like if the only driver installed so far for my dvd drive was the one that was running now. So, I tried other things...

I tried to install again the drivers that came with the laptop. It didn't work.

I tried to run windows restore point twice, to a date 3 or 4 days before today (it was woorking fine 4 days ago). It dind't work, the recovery wasn't sucessfull.

I tried unstall the driver that was running and ask windows to detect hardware changes, but it keep installing the same bad driver all the time.

After some of my driver unistalls and the windows restore, the dvd drive just disappered!! I tried many times detect new hardware, add new hardware, search hardware changes, but this time on, my dvd drive was never found again.

So I decided I was going to format my windows, and tried to boot windows dvd. It didn't boot. I checked my setup, it was correct with dvd boot in first place. I tried the option F12 that allows me to choose what I want to boot from start. I chose DVD drive, but it just started windows.

In the setup, tab device info, I see: FIXED BAY DEVICE = CD-ROM. So, it`s appearing there. I don`t know if before it was named differently because I never paid attention to it before (like if it was dvd-rom or something else).

When I put the DVD it spins, the led is flashing, everything seems fine, but I can`t boot, I can`t run any cd/dvd because nothing happens when I put the cds and my cd drive is gone from windows (in my computer window).

I have no idea what else I can do. My last hope was to fix everything with a new windows installation, but I can't boot. It was supposed to be a problem just INSIDE windows, but I don't know how, it's affecting now my dvd even before windows loads, like in the setup/post with no booting.

Can anyone offers me a solution? thanks

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060