CD Drive tray has a mind of its own

I have a Samsung CD/DVD-writer drive SH-S223F (5 1/4" ATA not USB). On Windows 7 lately, this drive has developed a mind of its own. Specifically, the drive tray keeps opening and closing randomly by itself. I don't know what the problem is, but the behavior is very erratic and irritating.

Has anyone else noticed behavior on this or other drives? Any recommendations to fix this behavior?

Update: This happens when I double-click the icon in "Computer" and also when I press the drive tray eject button.

Update 2: did some more testing. The CD tray auto-closing for me always happens twice. The third time I try to open it (either by pressing the drive button or via right-click>eject in 'Computer'), it remains open. Noticed this as consistent behavior at least the past 3 times now.

kpax

Posted 2009-10-17T10:08:39.423

Reputation: 355

Answers

There was another question here recently. Apparently Windows 7 will open the tray if it is empty and you double click on the drive icon in explorer. Could you or something else be accidentally doing this? Maybe with a media hotkey?

Otherwise, as it's an external drive (right?), it could be a W7 driver issue. See about an update.

Does this happen if there is a disk in the tray? If not, and if nothing else works, keep a randon or blank disk in the tray.

outsideblasts

Posted 2009-10-17T10:08:39.423

Reputation: 6 297

I just checked and you're right...the tray does open when it is empty and I double-click the icon in "Computer". However, no sooner than it opens, does it close on its own, regardless of whether there's a CD/DVD in there. I just tried both cases (empty and with CD/DVD). – kpax – 2009-10-17T10:33:15.117

I had this happen on XP, and the problem went away when I replaced the drive with a new one.

You could also check for Starforce copy protection on your PC - I've had drive problems in the past that went away when I removed it. Nothing using it is going near one of my systems again.

MartW

Posted 2009-10-17T10:08:39.423

Reputation: 1 852

The thing is that this drive is less than 3 months old! As far as the copy protection, I'll have to check. – kpax – 2009-10-18T17:54:43.767

There is some "prank" software out there that will cause a CD drive to open and close randomly. The one I'm familiar with uses "open_CD.exe" so poke around on your computer to see if that files exist. Here is a link that will tell you more :- http://www.rjlsoftware.com/software/entertainment/open_cd/

onewiggy

Posted 2009-10-17T10:08:39.423

Reputation:

No prank software here. This is pretty much a clean install of Windows 7 and I'm the only one who has access. No noobs poking around on this one :) – kpax – 2009-10-18T17:55:52.703