HP Pavilion a445c with this drive freezes when I put a disk in, or if I attempt to boot and a disk is already in it. Hours with Tech Support (chat)and attempt to find new driver for drive were not succesful. Attempt to reload NERO 6 also froze the computer. Any hints about how to get HP to fix or replace this funky drive?? My other HP works fine.

It's possible that the drive itself is going bad. My daughter was complaining about frequent lock-ups with her PC; constantly having to reboot (older unit that I built: AMD K6-2 400, WD 8.4 GHz, with an Acer CD burner - can't remember the model now, but it's about 4 yrs. old). I thought that maybe a hardware upgrade would fix the problem, so installed a new m/b with AMD Athlon XP 2000+, and new RAM. Still didn't fix the lock-ups, so installed a new 40 G Maxtor (probably needed a new HD anyway!). STILL locking up! Finally figured out that the Acer CD burner was the problem - yanked the ribbon & power cables to the drive and haven't had a lock-up since. I'm going to replace the unit and the other CD drive in the PC with a single DVD/CD burner. Is your HP still under warranty? If so, maybe they should just sent you a replacement drive. Otherwise you may want to replace it yourself.