The drive will not eject and its on an Autoplay loop even though there is no disc in the drive. I tried restarting the computer but it didn't fix the problem. Any suggestions?
Smash it with a hammer.. No just kidding.. Did the machine get bonked or (if it's a laptop) dropped? On most cd drives there is a small hole that you can use a paperclip to manually open the drive, this'll solve the opening problem and maybe once it's open you can see if there's a visible issue with it. Sometimes dust can really funk up a drive, as does hot conditions and of course age, older drives fail, it's just a fact of life. If your PC is in a place that doesn't get adequate ventilation or gets excessive heat, your dvd-rw could have gotten messed up that way too. What type of machine and operating system? If it's Windows-based simply go into the control panels and into System, take a look at your Devices and see if the dvd-rw is registering any errors that way. Perhaps downloading an updated Driver would fix it.
It's a desktop computer and its well ventilated etc. I just checked in the device manager and the device is working properly. Really weird problem, never seen anything like this. I will try turning off the computer instead of just restarting to see if that fixes it. Thanks for the suggestions.
I wouldn't bother with trying to fix it, especially if it's older. Is this a DVD drive on a laptop or desktop? Replacement drives are so cheap these days, and I don't imagine you'd end up paying more than $30-$40 for one.