its only just happened recently, sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. When it does stop, it will not eject until after I have re-booted , so that means its a software error, right ? how do I fix it ? its a notebook.

Next time that happens take notice if the drive light is on steady or not. If a disk can't be read by the drive then it can act that way. That could be due to a dirty lense of failing drive. Of course a defective disk could also be causing it. I suppose there may be other causes too.

The drive only requires it is connected to power and the computer is running in order for the eject/retract button on it to work - it does not require a data cable connection to do that. When the tray retracts with a disk in it, the disk should spin, and the led on the front of the drive should come on briefly. If that doesn't work when the data cable is disconnected (easy to do on a desktop computer), there is something wrong with the drive itself. - the most common reason - the bearings in the motor are failing and the motor cannot spin fast enough or does not spin at all. - a laser or it's circuits may have failed - the drive's board may be damaged - many optical drives have a rubber belt - if it is slipping the eject/retract may not work properly ..... If the data cable is connected.... If there's nothing wrong with the drive or the disk, the drive will eject the disk, but you have these things going on.... - your mboard bios spins the disk(s) if present while booting - you can't eject the disk, if the boot order settings in the bios have an optical drive in the list, when the bios is trying to see if the disk is bootable. - Windows spins the disks if they are present while loading Windows, and at seemingly random times while you are using Windows, even when you are not actively accessing the disk, and the led on the front of the drive does NOT always come on and it is often spinning more slowly, so you may not be aware it is spinning. e.g. when you access My Computer or Windows Explorer, if there is an optical disk present, Windows will read the disk before loading either of those. - the disk will not eject right away if Windows is trying to access it at the time, and the led on it is NOT always lit up when it is trying to do that - if the disk is spinning at the time you want the disk to eject, it will not eject right away - the disk has to stop spinning first, then it will eject. ..... If there is a problem with the drive reading a disk, there may be a longer delay until the disk ejects, and the led on the front of it may stay on longer or blink on and off longer. The disk won't eject until Windows has finished it's procedure and the disk has stopped spinning. - you will get that if you try to read a DVD or other type of media in a drive that can't read them - a burned disk other than a CD-R or a DVD-R may not read properly in a drive it was not burned in - the disk you are trying to read may be defective, especially if it is a cheap bulk burned disk. - the disk and the laser lenses should be clean - try using a laser lens cleaning CD in the drive, or on a laptop you can often easily see the laser lens on the drive when the tray is ejected and clean it with a Q tip or a tissue.

Some burner programs will lock the drive and not let it be ejected. This is done because the program hasn't completed the final cleanup on the disc. Nero's 'InCD' is one of the programs that does this under certain conditions. If there is any burner program running at the time this happens, try shutting it down.