CDs not read/written in LITEON DVDRW SOHW-1693S

I got this drive off a parts trade and ever since I've had it, it will not read ANY kind of CD-based media (CD, CD-R, CD-RW, audio CDs, you name it). The drive will spin up in incriments and stall out, then repeat for about a minute, and the disc will not be recongized. This bums me out because I long since chucked out my CD-RW drive and I can't burn audio or data CDs anymore, much less read them. Is this an incompatiblity issue with my system? Drivers and firmware are all up to date. Specs are as follows:

Athlon 64 3700+ Clawhammer, 2.4GHz 1MB L2
512MB x 2 Corsair XMS PC3200 DDR SDRAM
ECS NForce4 A754 rev. 1.0a
Antec Smartpower 450W ATX12v PSU
nVIDIA GeForce 6800GT 256MB PCIe
Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB HDD
LITEON DVD-ROM SOHD-16P9SV
1.44MB floppy
Windows XP SP2 with all latest updates

Any help or insights are much appreciated.

Yeah that's the general consensus from all the people I've talked to about it. Seems that these drives have a high defect rate so perhaps I'll get a different brand, or just get another one of these, swap em, and take it back saying it don't work.

I think I'll try doing the above. Heh. I'm willing to take the chance if I can get a free replacement. If not I'll definately look into the Samsung drives.