big CD/DVD drive problem

[thynmaster]

My cd drives are acting up lately. I've never experienced this problem before. Every time I try to load a cd, my drive has an extremly difficult time refreshing. When I first noticed the problem I started watching my drives in the "my computer" folder. I notice these things: After inserting a cd into the drive I hear some spinning as if its reading the disc and getting some data from it(like the icons displayed inplace of the drive icon and the name of the cd). When the spinning has stopped there are no changes to the drive icon. Selecting the drive to display info on the content of the disc shows nothing, as if there is no disc. I can right click and select refresh and this sometimes gets a cd recognized, also just selecting the drive prompts the recognition, again sometimes. When I do get a cd loaded and use it, I then eject the cd. The drive displays as if the cd where still in the drive. I can even explore the differant folders inside the cd that is no longer in the drive. I can sometimes fix this with refresh or some other method. After using one cd and inserting a different cd though, the my computer folder freezes. Task manager is incapable of end tasking the folder after that. Also every program I start from then on starts frozen or just runs in the background not showing up visualy exept in the task manager which cant end task these programs either. Basically royally locking up my pc. I need to fix this quick. I can't even use a cd for fear of pc lockup. Please help somebody. Could it be a virus, could it be a bad driver or firmware? I check on the later two and could find no updates for either. Again, Please help. Thanks