sometimes when I put a cd in the drive, and try to access it, it wont read properly and just spins with the light on the drive flashing on and off.
If I try to unmount and eject the drive, nothing happens.
If I leave it for a while the problem will usually correct itself after a good 5 to 10 minutes.
If I change to a console (ctrl,alt,f1), it will print info across the screen


this happens every couple of seconds.

Even if I give up and reboot, it still takes a while before it gives up.

Is there any way to force the drive open?

You could try eject /dev/hdc, but perhaps it is broken?

Another thing to consider is changing to a different drive controller if you have one. I.E. switch to the secondary IDE controller on your MB.

Cheers,
Ithaycu

It seems to be disk related, as it only happens on certain disks other wise I dont have a problem ejecting.

I also have two dvd drives, one a normal sony dvd/cd drive, the other a sony dvd burner. When I have this problem with a disk, it does it on both drives.

I dont think it is hardware related because I only just upgraded my computer from a PIII system to PIV and the problem has been there with both systems.

You can force a drive open by turning off the machine and sticking an unfolded paper clip in the tiny hole on the front of the drive. If you're having problems with some disks, but not others it is probably the disks. Stop using those.

restarting the computer will always solve the problem for me. The issue is I should not have to restart the computer. This is linux.

I need to be able to tell the computer to give up on trying to access this disk and let me get it out...

It can be very frustrating when you are compiling a large program and then have to reboot the computer half way thru because of some dodgy disk.