I'm sure you guys have answered millions of these questions, but I can't for the life of me figure this out.
Ok, so my laptop will not read any cds or dvds.
So I open my device manager and the Matshita UJDA760 dvd/cd-rw has a little yellow exclamation mark next to it.
How is it possible that I can fix this?

You failed to state what operating system your running so lets assume it is Windows XP.....Home Edition or Pro, it doesn't matter.

Simple solution:

Situation
There is a yellow exclamation mark for CD/DVD drives in Device Manager. The device status in the properties of the driver might indicate an error code, for example 32 and 37.

Solution

To solve the issue, you have to edit the Windows Registry:
Click Start, then Run, type REGEDT32 and click OK.
Locate and then remove the following registry values:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlCl ***{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}LowerFilters

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlCl ***{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}UpperFilters

http://common.packardbell.com/itemnr/topic_02125/topic_02125.gif

Close Registry Editor.
Reboot the system for the changes to take effect.

Note: Some programs are unable to detect the CD/DVD drive after these steps. To solve this, simply re-install the program in question. Also, in few instances the order in which the programs are (re-)installed can make a difference.

And here's another mothod that will do this automatically for you if your afraid to edit the registry manually.

http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?t=22131
(automatic fix, post #7, download file: CdGone.zip)