Please anyone help a tech challenged gaming girl

I posted this in hardware also but it seems to be a gaming,CD Rom problem also,maybe...I'm not even positive,so I'll repost my original post and the link to it in hopes that maybe some smart,helpful,patient soul will try to help or even add suggestions to what I've already tried.Thank you very much for any assistance in advance!
Here is the post and link;
I'm very un-techy and like to mostly play games from my CD Rom,now I am getting errors saying missing files,and Autrorun settings being off,I think I checked thge right place and it said autorun or autoplay was enabled,but everytime I put in a game,even after a fresh iinstall,it has a flash of desktop icons,a few seconds of black screen like if it was preparing to start my game,I tried many,not just one game btw,but then there is nothing no messages at times others saying either missing dll or autorun settings not enabled.I can't have a missing dll on a freash install.So I don't want to screw anything up but need to know how to determine the problem and fix it.Any help is appreciated!The system is like 2 months old and hand built by my brother,whose unvailable for the next few weeks,I miss my games!
have XP home,1994 mhz processor,1 gig ram,54.60 free disk space of 74.52,VIA694 System Model:AWRDACPIBIOS Versionhoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG


Version:x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 Speed:1994 MHz
Any other questions that may help please just ask and tell me how to find the extra information,thank you,clueless female gamer

Here is the title and location of my dilemna,it wasn't allowing me to link.

http://majorgeeks.com/vb/images/misc/navbits_start.gif MajorGeeks Message Board > Help & Technical Forums > Hardware http://majorgeeks.com/vb/images/misc/navbits_finallink.gif Help CD Rom Autorun Setttings?


Desperate,clueless,and impatient till my brother who built the system gets back,2 whole weks w/o my only distractive,escape from real life,addiction! Sorry for long posts but wanted to add as much info as I can locate,help please!

 

It might be somthing as simple that its just a bad cdrom or the laser lense is dirty or obstructed. What type of CDrom/DVDrom is it? did you fully update your windows updates? sometimes there are patches released by the manufactures to fix bogus issues that deal with XP. You might want to try their website and look for a filmware or a driver update for your reader. Hope this helps!

To check your readers type/model right click my computer go to properties and hardware tab. Click device manager and all the info is there!

 

What dll(s) does it say are missing? And what game is it?