CD-drive no longer detected, 5920

Hey guys,

For the first time, I got a problem that's not graphic-related with my 5920 .
Anyway, I don't use the CD-drive in my Acer 5920 that often but I still burn a disc occasionally. And yesterday was one of those days.
I placed a Philips DVD-RW (first time I burned a RW) in the burner. It failed to detect it a few times, which I find quite odd, but it did detect it as an 'empty disc' after a few hours. I started the burning process (just with Windows file dragging) and went to sleep since it told me it was burning at 100kbs and needed another 3 hours.
The next morning, the laptop was still sleeping since it had no alarm clock like I do, so I woke it. I retrieved the DVD from the drive. There was no confirmation visible on screen on that the DVD was burned succesfully.

Today, I wanted to install a second Windows Vista on my other partition for 'study-related' work. I placed the DVD in and tried to access the drive. It didnt do anything upon double clicking in My Computer; no errors, no messages, nothing.
I decided to reboot.

After reboot, the drive didnt even show up anymore. It still makes a noise when I place a DVD but only the scratching and bleeping at the begin, not the fast spinning it does after a few more seconds. Moreover, Vista reported no CD-drives/burners in the device manager. It did however show a device called a Microsoft 6to4 adapter under Network, but it reports there are no drivers installed. This device is probably not related to the CD/DVD but I thought it is perhaps still worth mentioning, since I didnt notice it before.

When I looked in the BIOS, it only shows my Harddisk and some device called a 'MBA v9.4.5 slot 0800' to be attached to my computer. There is also a "IDE CD:" but there is no text following that item.

Does this mean the CD/DVD-drive died on me, or is there some other solution? I do have a 3 year pickup-and-return with Acer but is this specific problem covered ?

Thanks!