Vista - DVD/CD Drive & Photo Problem

Please help! My 12 year old recently installed a Bamboo Art Tablet onto our computer, which also included Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0, Corel painter Essentials 4.0 and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0. Since then, my DVD/CD drive doesn't work and my thousands of color photos have changed to black & white and have lines running through them and are stretched out. Their thumbnails are in color and look fine, but when I open each picture, they're B&W w/lines and stretched out. I am completely computer illiterate. I don't know what regedit, upper/lower filters, registries, or drives are or mean, never mind how to fix/uninstall/reinstall them and I'm afraid I will completely break my computer. I've never been on a site like this; are we allowed to exchange e-mail addresses or telephone #'s? If someone is willing to talk me through this, I think I might be able to fix my computer. Any help will be greatly appreciated, I'm at a loss. Thank you!

First thing first. do you have a backup of the files from before the problem started?

If not you should have, but you should back them up up anyway, NOW. then un-install the Bamboo art app by going into start>control panel>programs>adding removing>click on that app and \un-install. when finished reboot. then try opening a picture. let us know if that worked

KEn

Edit: you can also try right clicking a picture and choose corel as the app to open that type of file.

Thank you for your help. I'm embarrassed to say that, no, I don't have a backup. I will do that asap. I right clicked on a picture and it opened correctly in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 (one of the choices w/o browsing for Corel). Should I export all my pix to Adobe and give up on Windows Photo Gallery? Or should I still un-install the Bamboo Art? Should I also un-install everything else, Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0, Corel painter Essentials 4.0 and Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0?

LCL,i do have some fixes to you,but you must ask somebody to help you if you don't know anything about this fixes,this are .reg fixes,includes either fixes for photos,sounds,exes,etc....i give you the link for,only for any vista OS.File association fixes for Windows Vista
any help post again and ask,i'll be around.

Thank you zigzag3143 and Ken. I un-installed everything and my DVD drive popped back in and more importantly, my pictures are back to normal everywhere. I am backing up the computer as soon as I finish this post and once that's complete, I will try to re-install my daughter's art tablet. Thank you again!

Our pleasure. Its always nice to see things work out. Good Luck Mate

Ken