CDRW BURSTS out tray with NO appparent REASON!

[Lysimachus]

I have a LiteOn DVD 16x/48x drive as the master, and a Philips CDRW 800 as the slave. Everything has worked wonderful until one day my CDRW starts acting extremely retarted. It's acting in so many strange ways that I can't put them into words...but here's somewhat how it goes:

1. While working on the computer, the CDRW tray will all of a sudden pop out with no apparent reason. There is no CD inside either. Then, I go to click the close button, but it WON'T CLOSE. So I have to force it back in by manually pushing the tray.

2. Another strange thing that I noticed not too long ago is that Windows XP is not even detecting it as existent. My DVD drive has always been Drive F: and my CDRW has always been Drive G:, but I notice that Drive G: does not even display. I have my drives letters in the following order: Floppy A:, Local Disk C:, Local Disk D:, Zip 250 E:, DVD Drive F:, CDRW Drive G:, and Network Mapped Drive H:.

Now please don't tell me that it's the way I have it setup, for I have used this setup for many many months now, and have never had a problem until now.

3. Windows XP will suddenly lock up. I'll wait for a few moments before I can move the mouse again. I restart the computer, and then back to freezing again when attempting to open an application.

What is interesting is I decided to completely disconnect my CDRW. After I disconnected it, I've never had a problem with the computer locking up again. I only disconnected the IDE connector. But once in a while, the tray will still unexpectedly shoot out.

4. I cannot open the tray nor close it. But it will open by itself when it wants to.


Any ideas on this issue? Do you think that my CDRW is bad? Or is there some Hardware conflict or software issue?

Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[imported_Phil]

Gotta love that "acting retarded" description

Anyway, it sounds like that drive's bad, or the cable maybe. Swap IDE cables and see if the problem goes away? At work we had a machine with a DVD drive that randomely disappeared and reappeared, we traced it to a (non-obviously) faulty cable. To this day, I still have no idea what's wrong with it!

Let us know how it goes,

Dopefiend

 

[FMann]

It could also be a power problem. I've seen some machines with the HD and floppy drive on the same power cable and the FD would go off once in a while when the HD was being accessed.

Try putting it on it's own power line (no other devices hooked up to it) and see what it does.