CD makes drive malfunction Please Read

My Windows 7 Dell Studio 1550 laptop computers disc drive has been acting up for a little while now, like having to insert a DVD twice before it starts to autoplay with Windows Media Player (WMP). Just little things like that.

Now when I try to play my new CD it isn't recognized by WMP and when the data is examined with Windows Explorer the files it contains are garbage- default files of size 1kb with default track names like: Track01, Track02....

Thinking that it could be that the CD might be readable on normal car CD players and similar, I double check with an old CD that I burnt myself a couple weeks ago. It doesn't recognize that either and it Win Explorer displays the same garbage. WM Player does literally nothing when it is told to play to it, VLC tells me that:

"Your input can't be opened:
VLC is unable to open the MRL 'cdda:///D:/'. "

What the heck I think so in desperation I try the original CD in my gaming tower. Its starts to play so I stop it, thinking that it must be my laptop that is malfunctioning. However, no my tower refuses to eject the CD at all.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.