Computer does not recognise Audio CDs

Alright, so today I got myself a brand new album in CD, went home only to realize that it doesn't seem to be recognized by my DVD drive. I tried some other albums to see if it was a problem with the CD itself and the problem persisted. My DVD drive has an issue where it's sometimes not recognized by the computer when it starts up and it doesn't show up on File Explorer or Device Manager. However, restarting the computer or putting it to sleep and waking it usually fixes this and it seems to work perfectly fine otherwise. Could the two problems be related? I'd like to add that the CD works perfectly fine on my PS3 or any other sort of CD player so it's probably not related to it. Also, the problem with my DVD drive surfaced when I did a clean install of Windows 10 to replace my hard drive about a year ago. Thanks in advance.

Bree said:

Does the drive see DVDs? The drive uses a different colour laser for reading a CD or a DVD. It's possible that the CD laser has failed. Your other issues suggest the drive may be developing hardware problems.

Try the CDs in another PC, if you can. Oh, I see you already did that, so you know the CDs are OK.

Alright, so I tried inserting a blank CD-R I got like 5 years ago into the drive and it detected it. I formatted it and wrote some data to it and it seems to work just fine.

After trying all my CDs on the drive to see if any work, I actually found one that did. According to the notification it's an "enhanced audio CD" and it contains a really crappy player application as well.

Bree said:

That's a hopeful sign. Do you have a CD/DVD drive cleaning disk? It may just be that the drive's lens needs cleaning. If it's a laptop or a desktop with a slimline drive the lens is in the tray and accessible when it's open. If so, you could try gently cleaning it without needing a cleaning disk.

It's on a desktop computer and I don't think I have anything that can clean it. If I have to remove it and clean it I might as well get a new one anyways, they're really cheap these days. Is there anything else I can try?

Looks to be a desktop type DVD drive, if that is the case it is too involved opening that and cleaning the optics and mount.
Just buy a new one they are very cheap.
Personally I won't use cleaning discs (historical experience reasons).

Another factor is storage/labelling of the CDs both burned ones and commercial CDs.
In both cases labelling printed, written on, stuck on, burned on(label flash etc) can effect the active layer as this is close to the label side.
I never label mine at all, only the box they are in.

ODD/Optical Disk Drive cleaners used to be a disc with fibers attached/embedded, when run brushed dust from the laser/s. Other than that replacement would be next. A choice of a new drive is more difficult now-a-days, have a couple of SFF HP computers that require only an HP replacement, have an extra cable connection on them for opening and closing using a button on the front of the case.

Tried connecting an external DVD drive to the computer and the disc played just fine, so it's pretty clear this is an issue with the drive itself. I tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the drivers for the drive to no avail (just in case), so I guess I'll look into getting a new one. I've had this one for almost a decade so I guess it's not so shocking that it failed.