Goin in order..

A) Yep, checked the lens (cleaned it with a Q-Tip. No effect. But the drive worked literally mintues before... so I dont think thats the problem.)
B) It appears on My Computer, and it tries really hard to autorun, but just can't read any discs. I think its a windows problem, but I cant figure out a way to reinstall windows without my cdrom drive working. I think if I could format, the cdrom drive would probably start working again, but without the cdrom drive I cant get the system restore disks to work so I cant even do that. Kinda stuck.
C) Putting the reinstall CD in during boot up... just ignores it. Even though the bios says to boot from the CDrom, it ignores it and goes straight to winblows. I have absolutely no idea why. I guess its POSSIBLE the cdrom drive is just dead. It seems mighty unlikely, but its possible. Its not worth me buying one though.
D) Your mom.
E) Checked the CDs on another machine, they work fine.
F) This might be it... but if windows can find the cd rom drive, you'd have to assume the Bios can find it. The bios DOES say that my secondary IDE drive is "none", which I think is wrong -- i think it should point to my cdrom drive, but I've tried to set that manually and I dont think its "sticking".
G) No, I didnt buy the warranty. In general I'm pretty computer savy, but I have never experienced this and I really cant find many instances of other people experiencing it either (though I did, interestingly enough, find a windows KB that talked about CDRoms and DVDRoms dying after installing windows. BUt doing their fixes brought about no changes.) I bought this machine used a good two years ago, and it was probably two years old then. And its an awesome machine (especially for the $250ish I paid).

Right now its not a huge deal. I got the wireless drivers loaded by using a thumbdrive and copying the CD from another PC then loading the thumbdrive. So the wireless is fine, and I can load 99.9% of the programs I want over the internet (pokerstars... uh.. instant messenger.. and firefox) and in actuality I almost NEVER use the cdrom drive (AKA, I only use it when something goes wrong.) So everything is fine now, I can surf, I can play poker, I can use AIM, I can do everything I normally do with this machine --- but if something goes wrong, I don't think I can reinstall. I'm kinda at "last chance" mode. If it dies, I think that'll be it. Maybe at that point it'll just be time to buy a new laptop.