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Computer freezes when CD/DVD drives accessed

For about a year, I have happily used my factory preinstalled CD RW/ DVD drive in my Compaq desktop.  Last week, I decided it was time to starting burning DVDs so I bought the latest Memorex DVD writer.  It is dual mode and can burn double layer DVD9 discs at 16x.  I used this drive to burn 10 or so CDs and one DVD successfully over the course of two days.  Then, it began to fail.  At this point, read access to CDs and DVDs causes the computer to sometimes freeze, but not consistently.  I put the old CD RW/DVD drive back into the computer as slave to the new drive and amazingly, now accessing CDs/DVDs in the old drive also sometimes freezes the computer.  Everything works fine if nothing is in either drive during bootup and I do not use them.  

I expect that this isn't nearly enough information to go on, but as a preliminary question, I want to know how to even diagnose the problem.  Full points goes for full solution, but partial points go to even discovering the source of the problem.
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vanegas

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burrcm,

The jumpers are already set, one to master and the other to slave.  The drives do work sometimes.  Also, during boot I see that the drives are recognized consistently and in the right order, and if I don't use them at all, they appear in the right order in the device manager.  

vitam,

Good guess, but unfortunately it happens even with store bought discs.  

I have heard that Dell have specialised hardware.  I'm not sure how correct this is.. but maybe compaq do the same??  Hardware that was only bought from them(Dell) would only work in the computers.   Again I havn't seen this for myself.
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how high is the pc's memory? type dxdiag in start/run
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archerdapunk,
Probably not an issue since it does *sometimes* work. Anyhow, would I find out Compaq's intentions? Their tech support didn't mention this possibility.

tpilg,
I will try this.

DanCh99,
Good idea, I updated the motherboard BIOS. So far, the problem is still there. I don't have another PC available, so trying the drives elsewhere will have to wait.

all4artz,
Why would I want UMDA disabled?

4ceReconSniper,
502MB.
because , you do not need for cd/dvdrom
Plus it is known to caused problem to  the CD /dvd rom drive when enabled
Im only saying try disabling in the cd/dvdrom section of device manager
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tpilg,
Drives fail in the same way when they are (each) the only master.

all4artz,
Tried it. Still fails.
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Final update.

If I have only the new drive connected, and many non-essential background processes are stopped, then the computer does not freeze when I insert a new disc.  I will work from this basepoint to isolate the problem.  When I've done so, I'll post a new question, referring to this one.

Thank you, everyone.  I'll distribute the points to what seemed to most promising advice.
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No one particular comment answered the question, but several were helpful and I would like to award them points.  I can't do this without picking one as "the answer".  What should I do?