Windows cannot load the device driver for this

Give this a whirl:
CD-Rom stops working. After checking device manager you find an exclamation mark on the drive. It doesn't mean the drive is dead. It could be an upperfilter or lowerfilter registry issue that is keeping you from accessing the cd drive.

This fix worked for my client:
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/XP_CD-DVD-Fix.zip

Also, try this fix from microsoft.

CD-ROM access is missing and messages cite error code 31, code 32, code 19, code 39, or code 41.

Try this before replacing the drive and remember that you may have to reinstall some burning software.

New laptop not working? Or it stopped working after you did ... ? Windows upgrade? Uninstall in device manager? Pirated Nero software? Won't be fixed removing cdrom.sys: try http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461