the dvd drive in my laptop recently stopped working and i don't really want to pay a shitload of money to have it fixed, so i'm going to see if i can repair it myself... anyone with experience in such matters have any advice on what could be wrong with it and how to go about fixing it?

oh, i should probably give some details about what it's doing... i tried to open it (by pushing the eject button and it opened about 2 millimeters and won't go in or out at all. pressing the eject button has no effect.

Sounds like it's jammed. If I were you, I'd probably end up trying to pull on it really hard, which would invariably break it. Once I was dealing with a CD-Rom drive in a desktop that wouldn't go back in after it was ejected, and upon further inspection I found that a CD had seemingly blown up inside the drive, and that its fragments were blocking the gears. But that's neither here nor there.

Did you try the emergency eject hole? That might get it open. The other thing maybe would be to just turn the laptop onto its side and shake it or tap it a few times to try and dislodge anything that might be jamming it.

Take the drive out of the laptop and begin to disassemble it. If you don't see any foreign objects obstucting the workings, some of the eject mechanism gears may have disengaged or jumped track. Try to work them back into place. Make sure the tray can slide in and out with minimal force before tightening the screws.