CD Writer acting as if there's a cd in the drive???

[Brad Mifsud]

All of a sudden my HP CD-Writer Plus 8100i has been spitting out coaster after coaster with Nero?
I've had no problems before, and I burn a lot!
The weird thing is that if you're in win explorer or my computer, you can see the device, "cd drive d:" but when you double click it (with no cd in drive).. it opens
up, without the whole "please insert a disk into drive d:" error prompt, and shows a blank window (ie, no files). It doesn't have any disk stats (ie free space/used) just that it has opened the cd drive???

This is what I've tried so far:
-removed the device from the manager and letting it re-establish (no errors showing)
-defrag the hd
-uninstalled and re-installed nero
-installed the latest Nero update
-installed latest aspi
-used a lens cleaner cd
-checked the firmware is up to date
-checked the drivers are up to date
-lowered the writing speed
-changing the media
-tried to burn different types of disks (audio, data, tao, dao)same result
-got all windows updates
-disabled background programs including anti-virus
-full virus scan
-did a system resore (XP Pro)
-ensured the cables are secure
-freed up more space on the hd (4 gigs free on the c: partition)

Power gets to the drive, it recognizes it's there after removal and it can read cds, play music from them, open files...it just gives me a magnitude of varrying error messages if I try to write to it.
I think the key lies in why it's able to access/open the drive without media???

Has anyone seen this before/have any ideas?
(I have a HP Pavilion 8550C)
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm going outta my mind.
Thanks,

P.S. This thread has been moevd from Disk to Optical Jukeboxes & Drives. - Hp forum moderator