Do you take care of your CD/DVD's? Dirty, and badly scratched discs can ruin a drive. Some Burner drives require ventilation (All burners i've had, had fans at the back of the drive), is it possible cables behind the drive are blocking ventilations holes?, this can cause dust to build up in the drive and screw the laser. Very rarely will an optical drive need drivers to work correctly, as they basically all work with the same principals, same with hard drives.