I install and run 10.5.6 with the internal CD/CVD drive in my Acer Aspire 3000MLi, AMD SSE2 but sooner or later it stops reading disks, or fails to mount the CD/DVD drive!

When this happens the drive is no longer found by Disk Utility and two options are also missing from the CD & DVD control panel in System Preferences as shown below (there should be five)



my drive (which works perfectly in WinXP) is as follows:

IDE\CdRomOptiarc_DVD_RW_AD-554DA________________2.01_

This problem is driving me nuts as everything else works fine, wireless, usb, PCMCI modem, sound.

Any help appreciated, I've searched everywhere for a solution to this problem?