DVD Drive won't eject or read disks.
 

So for seemingly no reason what-so-ever my DVD drive stopped reading the disk inside (a Curb Your Enthusiasm DVD, no less) and would not eject it.

I promptly removed the disk by using a small pin to manually open the drive. This of course allows me to send the DVD back to Netflix, but that only solves one of my problems.

I haven't taken my computer apart in over a month, so I know I didn't mess it up physically. I tried reseting my computer and that did not work. I noticed that my computer seems to attempt to read whatever is in there now and again and many of my applications are running a bit slower or with a bit of lag as a result (that last part is just a hypothesis).

Any ideas, outside of the drive being dead? It's only a year and a half old.

Possibly relevent information:
Hp Pavillion Laptop
Windows XP

Try updating the BIOS. Toshibas are known for their DVD drives failing without the proper BIOS installed, it could be the same for HPs. If that fails, remove the drive and see if that returns the performance to your unit.

Well, my machine couldn't find a driver and my device's name didn't pop up on google, so I'll try your second suggestion.

Thanks for now~

if your computer is pre-built than toshiba should have the driver your looking for. Also check device manager if all your devices are working.