when I tried to use a cd that had been around here for a while that had data already on it. The drive light would just stay on continuously, and the drawer wouldn't open in order to eject the disk. I had to shut down and reboot to get it to release it during the boot process only.....if I let it get all the way to the desktop, the cdrw/dvd drive would try to read the disk again and the same problem would happen. Once I got the disk out, it was very warm compared to other disks that had been in the drive.

I came to the conclusion that the older cd disks sometimes can't be read by the newer drives since the laser is revamped for newer drives and the color of the media on old disks (especially if it's blue) actually 'blind side' the laser now. How I got around this is that I have two drives now......if the older drive (both happen to be burner types) can still see the disk correctly, I use that drive to burn a new copy to the new dvd drive with new media, and keep the burned copy as my new backup that can be used in the new drive if the old drive finally dies and the old cd becomes useless.

If you don't have two drives, but know somebody who does, you can ask them to do this for you and then test the burned copy in your cdrw/dvd to see if it now works. If it does, you've found the problem and know how to resolve it now.

TONI