What would cause a disk drive to spontaneously open?

[Miriamele]

I wonder if anyone could help me figure this out.

We have an older CD burning drive in our computer tower (it's quite old, I think it's probably 8 years old). It still works great. The weird thing is that once in a while, at totally random moments, it opens up all by itself. It probably does this a few times every day. Sometimes if I close it it opens again. Sometimes, it even opens and then closes itself!

It seems to have a mind all of its own. I was just wondering if anyone knew why a drive would act this way. As I said it still works great, reads disks and burns no problem.

This isn't an important matter but I am curious about it. Thanks.

[bizzard]

Its probably a problem with the tray mechanism. Some drives start to behave so, when used for a long time or when handled rough. Its a simple problem and you can fix it with a service. If you know someone who can open the drive and fix it back, just do that. Most probably, it will do the work.

The opposite happens to some drives; they won't open even if you press the button. They tend to come, but won't.

[naives]

I think it is the problem with the tray. I too had this problem with my DVD drive. I just sent it for a small service and now it is OK.

[hosam]

if you can clean all the dust inside it then it should work I suppose sometimes its come from this, and try to make good cleaning without alcoholic products or cleaners and don't use any water again too just clean peace of cloth or something like it and make soft clean only at the side of the door of your CD burning drive.

[Miriamele]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Since we have another drive that we use more, eventually my husband just took the tray right out of the disk drive. Now it can't open anymore--but I still hear it making noises like it's trying to!

[Mr. Magoolachub]

That could be the work of a "prank" virus. There are petty viruses floating around that do just this. Open and close the tray. Nothing else, just that.

[vcpt]

Yes some virus are known to cause these kind of behaviour. They open your disk drive randomly or while performing certain tasks. But it is better that you run a virus scan on your computer preferably with Norton, Kaspersky or AVG 8.
Still if problem persists it could be hardware problem, so then you should call for service guy.

[Jace]

Virus, mallware and the like.


I had that with my old computer and it turns out that symtoms of the infection is, among other things, the opening of the disk drive.

Trend Micro and Kaspersky have an article about it, I read them both, but I don't have the links anymore, I'm afraid... But I'm very sure it's a virus problem.

[addit420]

I pretty much think it is the prank virus. It is very easy to manage the CD Tray door programmatically.

[Jace]

Oh, yeah, my mom's computer had that.
Read about it on some site of a virus manufacturer some months ago.

Seems to be a sign of spyware or a virus. Best running some prog's to check your computer.