Can I play my CD games on my laptop with no CD drive?

[TortoiseBoy]

Hi Folks,
I was recently given a laptop with no CD drive on it. I have the ability to network with my desktop machine to load the games by sharing the CD drive. However, when I try to load the game and play it, even over the shared drive, it doesn't acknowledge the drive as a CD-ROM drive. So, can I get the networked drive to be acknowledged as a CD-ROM drive? Or, can I copy the information off of the CD to my HD and have it acknowledged as a CD-ROM drive? You can tell I am new at this stuff, so any information you can offer would be appreciated. By the way, I am only trying to play games that I own already. Thanks very much for your time.

TB