DVD drive acting weird. :(

[thomsbrain]

my lite-on 16X DVD drive that i've had for a year or two has started doing this thing where when you put in a disk (any kind of disk) it only properly recognizes it maybe 1 time in 10. the other times it either blinks its light and spins for a while and then gives up, or locks up and the light never stops blinking. when the drive locks, it locks the entire computer and i have to hit the reboot button on the case. sometimes it will lock 3 or 4 times in a row, often while the computer is still in BIOS. however, once you get a disk loaded, it will play perfectly, like nothing was wrong. any ideas what could be wrong with this piece of crap?