Vists crashes when CD/DVD-drive plugged in

Hi everyone.

I just installed Windows Vista Ultimate x64.
Installing it was already a pain because at certain points during the setup, my screen would turn black and all my drives (cd/dvd/hd) would hang up.
I managed to work around that by using a ps2-mouse and keyboard instead of USB ones.

However, now that Vista is installed, it still crashes randomly for no reason. The symptoms are the same: screen goes to powersaving mode and all drives hang up (the dvd-drive led, cd-writer-led and hd-led on the pc case light up and won't go out).

So what I tried was unplugging my DVD- and CD-Writer-Drive. That way, Vista ran stable for more than one hour.
I thought only the DVD-drive was damaged, so I decided to plug the CD-writer back in.
Vista then crashed twice within 5 minutes or so, same symptoms as always.

So I assume Vista isn't able to handle any of my optical drives. Currently I can only keep Vista running for more than two minutes by using the safemode.

I already searched for special drivers for Windows Vista, but couldn't find any.
Vista correctly detects and installs my drives and they appear in the device manager as if everything was ok.

What I don't understand especially is why the screen always turns off when a crash occurs.

My system:
Gigabyte P35C-DS3R rev. 2.1
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2,4Ghz
4GB RAM
Samsung HD501LJ SATA hard disk
GeForce 8800GT
USB mouse & keyboard

Strangely enough, a friend of mine has the exact same pc (just older board rev. and different ram manufacturer) and used the exact same Vista-DVD and never had any problems at all

I already ran chkdsk -> no result
Also checked memory and tried using only one ram stick, but nothing helped.

I am thankful for any help & suggestions

UPDATE: I updated my BIOS and didn't have any problems since. Could have thought about that earlier. I'll try to plug my DVD-drive back in as well and see the problem comes back, but I don't think so.

UPDATE 2: Everything works. So my outdated BIOS was definitely the problem. To anyone who was similar issues: update your BIOS!