I had the same problem with my wife's 2001 Windstar.
I got the "CD ERROR" complaint and was not able to eject or play any cd's (fully loaded 6 player so no attempts to load cds). I noticed that the CD door was still open so I gently inserted a credit card and slid side to side, my cds started ejecting, (earlier I hit eject for several slots when observing the problem), and player is now working as expected.
After continued reading on this website saw another post about using movie rental card, if I have to do it again I wil use my Blockbuster card. | 
