RESOLVED !!!!
Hiya,
same Laptop (ALDI), same problem.
I had tried deleting the registry entry as in a few posts below.
with that setting still in place (no idea if that helped or not) I went to try to upgrade firmware
the firmware on laptop is 01 and the upgrade is a 02 version.
you can snatch it at samsungodd.com
it toook me about three tries to download the firmware into the drive, but once that worked (one it shows a blue progressbar 1/3 way you're good ... wait then) i rebooted once it was finished and the drive behaves perfectly normal now.
when I eject a disc the icon in explorer is instantly updated to the default "cd dvd drive" and if i put in a disc it's recognised within the next 5 secs
no problems since
i never thoght it worked as the drive works perfectly fine in linux so I blamed windows 7 drivers (which are re-installed on reboot) ...
good luck !!!
Kalli