Hi !
of late I am facing this problem and I don't know how to solve. My DVD/CD combo drive ( not a DVD writer) is behaving peculierly. The tray often comes out automatically by itself and one even don't need to press the eject button !! even when I push the eject/load button the tray comes out/goes in irratically. I wonder why it is behaving in such an irrational manner. Something to do with the motherboard or something else ??
more that that, when I try to write .iso files or some other big files (>500mb) and check for data verification at the end of writing, the result is always 'burn failure'. But to my utter good luck, I found the 'burnt failure' CDs work perfectly and I installed fedora 7 with that !!!
The mouse pointer, after such a failure, simply go mad !! I see its crazy 'shaking' and 'dancing' over the screen but can't do anything to stop that. A reboot always helps to get the problem solved. As for the operating system, I use Windows XP and I use Nero OEM 6.6.1.4. for writings CDs/CD -RWs . Besides that, I use fedora 7 but this problem is in windows only. I have rolled back the offending drive and reinstalled it but the problem persists. Please help me overcome this !!!

Have you added any new cards or anything to the machine lately. What you have described can be cause by your power supply not supplying enough voltage for everything on the machine.