Now Vista won't play Sims 2 + ep?

I bought a new Dell XPS 210 about 6 weeks ago and after a month the HD was
found to be defective. I got the new one and got help installing it. Before
the new hard drive I could play Sims 2 and all the expansion just fine. Now,
when I go to install, each expansion starts to install, asks for the second
disk if there is one, and then when it asks for disk 1 to be put back in to
finish up, it can't read that the disk in in the drive. It does this with
each and every expansion. I've been installing the patches from the Sims 2
website and I set each one up to run in XP SP2 and as administrator....but no
luck. I've been on the phone many times with Dell and corresponding with EA
Games as well...they can't seem to help me. I reinstalled Vista again, last
night and am still having this issue. I've even tried putting a copy on my
computer and installing that way...but it still can't find the disk 1 at the
end of the installation.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would really be grateful. Thank you!