Annoying CD-ROM problem, someone please help!

Hey there. Just got a new PC, basically to play games a lot better with. Old PC was a P3-450, new one is an AMD 2.4Ghz with over 1gig of RAM. It's a beast. Basically it's here for gaming, only one problem, it won't play my games.

Here's the deal. I go to install Battlefield 1942 (all games I will mention are actual copies, not burned or stolen) and it installs and goes through it's installation process just fine. After it's all said and done, I do to play the game and I double click the shortcut and the Battlefield 1942 logo screen comes up where it reads the CD to make sure it's authenticated. The error message that pops up says:

"Please insert the correct CD-ROM, select OK and restart application"

I thought that I had the wrong disc in, so i put the other one in. Same result, put in the other third disc, same result. I had thought I had a faulty disc, so I tried it with another game, The Sims. After a perfect installation I go to play it, the logo screen comes up for authentication and alas, the same result. I try it with Call of Duty, which I purchased the day of getting the computer, put it in, perfect install, same result, on a brand new disc. It also did this with Max Payne and Splinter Cell.

It did play Wolfenstein however, but this is because it does not require the disc to play the game. So I've been trying to figure out what the problem is. It loads up fine, it installs fine and reads everything perfect up until I actually want to play the game.

I thought maybe it was a bad CD rom drive, so I had desabled it and ran it through the DVD-ROM drive... same result. I had re-installed Windows XP Home Edition just to make sure I got all the drivers... same result. I took out the CD-ROM from my old computer and put it in this new one since these games had worked on my old computer... same result.

It would appear that this is a computer issue and not a CD-ROM issue, but I would like to know if anyone out there has any help for me before I send it back into the computer company, who by the way couldn't help me and told me they've never heard of anything doing this before.

I just want to know if there's a beacon of hope before I ship this puppy back to the manufacturers for repair. Thank you so much, any help is appreciated!