I wanted to thank each of you for your suggestions about solving my problem. I tried each of your suggestions but without success, I wound up calling tec support and talked with a young man in the Philippines, he was very patient and got me through the process and I got the printer installed. Word of caution, read carefully the instructions when installing new hardware and when it says not to hook up the machine to the usb port before being told to do so during the installation process, DON'T DO IT. I was careless and it caused me a lot of aggravation........

Thank you, Zep. I used the MS Fixit and all is well. I knew I could count on you for help. How about some homemade peach ice cream? Our SC peaches are ripe now, and I'll be glad to make some for you.

The resolution was short -lived. Problem happened again and the noise after the paper clip insertion persisted until the computer is shut down. During the shutdown process, the DVD drive ran ever faster-- until I feared for my safety. I unplugged the computer. The drive opened after reboot. The information about the drive is in my original post. Looks as if the (ATA) drive is an obsolete bird and only used ones are available. Not to my liking. As best I can tell, my computer was built 4/14/2010-- not so long ago from my perspective. Obsolete already? So I need a new DVD drive. Please suggest a good one, compatible with my computer. This post was edited by bus_driver on Wed, Aug 14, 13 at 20:10

You know, years ago consumer electronics were built like appliances - hardware that was designed to work as specified when built and sold. Occasionally, after the hardware design and release, problems would arise and "technical service bulletins" would be issued by the manufacturer and problems would be fixed, usually under warranty. Later on, with firmware (computer software) now controlling products, manufactures could make fixes with a firmware upgrade and avoid costly hardware changes. Next came, "why should we wait on releasing this product, when we can do it now and finish it up in firmware upgrades later that the customer can/has to do later on?" So now, with Blu-ray, we have both hardware manufactures and Blu-ray DVD authoring facilities and replicators, all taking the same approach - make the customer figure it out and try to correct it with firmware upgrades. It's the same mentality used in the computer industry to make their failings your responsibility to figure out and resolve. OK! Off my soapbox now! Sushipup, try doing a firmware upgrade from the onscreen menus, with an internet connection, and see if the manufacturer has not already addressed the hardware/software conflict. If, when trying to perform an upgrade, it fails, try downloading the appropriate file to a USB thumb drive or CD-R instead and installing that way - the mfg website will usually provide a text file describing how to do this.