I'm stymied, and hope there is a simple solution here. I've been running Windows7 64bit on a Dell XPS 730 with 8Gb RAM and a quad core Intel processor with no problems. About a week ago I noticed that the optical drive, which has been fine for 3 years, opened when I turned the computer on and Windows came up. I tried closing it but it reopened by itself. I tried my Roxio Creator software and told it to close the drive, which it did.
When I shut down the computer, the drive opened just before the computer shut off. I manually closed the drive, but on boot up the drive opened again. Looking more closely I found that when the drive was closed, Windows thought it was open. When it opened, I found that the little light that reads the CD's was on and trying to read, even though the drawer was wide open.
I can trick the drive into playing a CD but the computer continues after that to think the drive is closed when it is actualy open. Has anybody experienced this? How do I get out of this cycle?