I think I need to get a new DVD drive, but this one is practically brand new, maybe a year old. When I press the button to open the carriage, the light comes on, it starts to open, but it goes back in and stays shut. Now I would automatically assume that this was a DVD problem, however, I have had a lot of program errors lately, computer freezing up, done quite a bit of hard shutdowns. I was wondering, is it possible that this is caused by a software issue, like maybe in the BIOS? I updated to the newest version of Ubuntu and that didn't help the DVD. I am just thinking that maybe with all of the hard shutdowns, something may have happened that a new DVD player would not help.

tried a BIOS upgrade?

 

its always worth a go. My BIOS is borked in the extreme. have to load it off a floppy disk everytime i boot my computer. still runs fine once it's started.

Oh yeah. I just got a new BIOS a year or two ago. You should give them a call. 1-800-800-BIOS They've got BIOS for everybody.