hardware or driver problem with my DVD+/-RW drive

I have got an HP Pavilion dv8040us laptop that has a lightscribe 8x dvd+/-rw. i bought it last december and it has worked perfectly up until the past couple of weeks. when trying to watch regular dvd's it will either not even recognize the cd and give me an error when trying to access the drive or the movie will skip and stutter really bad. i havent seen any problems yet with regular cd-r's.
i attempted to burn a data dvd with a bunch of video files for a friend and i can physically see burned data on the drive, but any computer i put it in just locks up the computer's dvd drive.

ive tried to just uninstall and re-install the driver through device manager, but that doesnt help. HP's site doesnt have any drivers for the drive either. my next step is to take the drive out of the laptop to see the exact model of it.

any suggestions, or is it just time for a new drive? it sucks that it has gone bad in under a year, but there is a lot of dust out here. i blow out everything on the computer 3-4 times a week with canned air, but i dont know what else to try to fix this damned thing.

 

It it is a typical firmware thing. Updating a CD/DVD Rom firmware is quite easy. You just go to the manufaturer's site and download a firmware flashing programme. You need to be carefull though because if you install another model's firmware you can permanentlly damage your drive.
You don't have to take the drive out of the case. To find out its model go to "My Computer", right click at the drive you want, click "properties" and choose the Tab "hardware".

 

ah, thanks i overlooked the device manager option haha. i cant believe i forgot about it since i had been there a couple times uninstalling/reinstalling the drive.
i will give the firmware upgrade a shot.
the drive is a TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L532M