QUESTION: I have a Compaq Presario 5008CA PC that I purchased new in 2001. The operating system is Windows Millennium. From time to time, the CD writer tray goes berserk, opening and closing on its own at different speeds. I have been told that it is a virus, or that the CD writer needs to be replaced and finally, to delete the driver and allow it to find a new driver on restart. I have replaced the CD Writer on the say-so of Best Buy personnel, and the new one started flipping out after a week, so I returned it and got a refund. We are running Norton Internet Security, and Spy Sweeper. Looking forward to your answer...
Ron
ANSWER: If you have a decorative bezel or door over your drives, that may be the problem. Sometimes the door presses on the drive release switch. Decorative bezels, meanwhile, have a spring-loaded extension button that goes through the extra case material to press the drive's actual release mechanism. I've seen a faulty spring on this type of arm cause a drive tray to go in and out at random, come out part-way and go back in, etc. — all without anyone touching the button itself. The effect is almost as if the drive is possessed. Kind of spooky when it happens, but fixing it is usually a simple matter of adjusting the spring or just removing the bezel completely (since it's only decorative).
Alternatively, you may have a trojan on your machine that either fools with the drive automatically, or gives remote access to the drive so that someone else can toy with your machine over your network connection. "OfficePoltergeist" is a program that pranksters love to use to do this. NetBUS is another example of a remote tool from many years ago that could play with your CDROM trays. Your antivirus or spyware scans should be able to detect this, though... It is possible you have a new trojan of this sort that is not yet detected by antivirus software...
Nerds On Site Support Team and Globetechnology.com
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