[stomachmonkey]

The burned cd's that it will not read, where they burned by that device?

The blank cd's that it will not read, have you successfully used media from that batch before or is this new media?

FYI, the drive has two lasers, one for CD's, one for DVD's. It's not uncommon for one to fail while the other continues to function so the fact that blank DVD's work is of little relevance for the CD problem.

And stop sticking stuff in there, that's a bad idea. It's not a cassette player.