When I go to the Desktop and click on a media icon (for my flash drive, a CD, whatever it is), the following problems occur, in this approximate sequence:

• Nautilus will close if it's open.
• the desktop icons disappear
• my Window List shows a button that says "Starting File Manager"
• the icons reappear
• the button in Window List disappears

Because of this problem, I can no longer drag and drop media, nor can I right-click to perform actions such as "Eject" and "Safely Remove Drive".

The same symptoms occur if I click a media icon (that is also present on the desktop) in Nautilus' Computer view, though notably not if I click in the places list on the left.

I have confirmed that this problem happens only if there is a CD in the drive (Matshita UJDA360).

Also, inserting a disc into the CD drive appears to kill all running programs and restart Nautilus (or X; I'm not sure). Applications like Brasero and Rhythmbox will not start while there is a disc in the drive. Removing the disc doesn't result in the list of media updating; it must be forced to update by clicking on one of the desktop icons and going through one of the above-described cycles.

It doesn't seem to matter what type of disc is in the drive. This has happened with CD-RWs I burned years ago using Roxio on Windows XP, the Ubuntu disc I installed from (burned with InfraRecorder Portable under Windows XP), and the retail game disc for Star Trek Armada II.

The first indication of a problem was Brasero dying when I tried to insert a disc for erasure and rewriting. Since then, I've drafted several different questions on various issues, finally combining them into this one when I realized that having a CD in the drive was the common link.

Could this be a simple driver issue? If Ubuntu is dynamically detecting my hardware on boot, can I specify drivers for devices that I know will be a problem if the default files are used?

I'm beginning to think that my laptop, an old Dell Inspiron 2650, is just too old or proprietary-driver-hungry (or something, maybe RAM-starved) for Ubuntu and Windows XP to play nicely alongside each other. Or maybe I just need to carefully take my wall-wart machine to a coffee shop for an afternoon so I can download updates and such from the Internet, as I lack a home connection.