Quicksilver Optical Drive has gone crazy II

[amazzari]

I didn't notice the option to categorize this question, and did so incorrectly. Here's the text of my question, with the correct categorization this time around..

[On Mar 14, 12:57am wrote:]
Hi everyone. Thanks so much for making this resource available. Mac has been agreeing that my problem "sure is weird," but they've been unable to address it.

Here's the deal: My optical tray appears to have agency. By which I mean, the drive ejects at will, doesn't read CDs, generally acts like someone is pushing the eject key, over and over and at random intervals.

Some background that may or may not be relevant:
1. I run a small record label and part of our process is creating CD art by burning on CDs with slightly wet ink. Troublesome, I know. The optical drive started this business after a particularly reckless run of CDs.

2. For a long time, the eject key on the keyboard was nonresponsive. I'd have to hold it down for awhile to get anything to happen. When I did, it sounded as if the drive was working really hard to deploy but that something was in the way.

3. I have the Computer "racked" sideways. I wonder if this puts some strange pressure on the drive.

4. My clock is behind on the desktop display. In my previous research into this problem, some type of overall system coordination seemed to be the problem with someone else's optical drive craziness.

Thanks very much, I appreciate this resource very much.

Take care,
Andrea

[Satcomer]

Have you reset your PRAM, repaired permissions or used a disk cleaner yet?

If none of those processes work, you most likely have a disk driver hardware failure and a replacement should probably be ordered.

[amazzari]

Thanks for your reply. I will try all three of these and then see what happens.
-A