Avast is great in most ways, but it’s locked my CDROM drive tray shut, it won’t open either by pressing the button or by software eject commands from My Computer.
Uninstalling seemed to solve the problem, but reinstalling brought it back.
I haven’t changed anything else as far as I can see.
Is there a command line (or other way) to release my CDRom and put it back under my control?
Thanks folks
Matt 
I honestly can’t see how avast! could lock your CD ROM drive, what makes you think that, symptoms, when did they begin, what where you doing at the time, scanning removable media, etc., etc. ?
There is usually a small pinhole in the front of the drive you can use a paper clip and see if that will open it.
Hi David
Thanks for replying.
The pinhole release doesn’t solve the problem (which began after installing avast).
Re-booting into Safe Mode allows me to open and close the CD Rom tray via the button to my heart’s content.
Re-booting then into ‘Normal’ mode leads to an unresponsive CD Rom tray (though I can still access and use the data on the disc, just the open/close function is locked out).
I’ve read elsewhere that there’s a (registry?) setting whereby programs can set a flag locking the CDRom drive whilst the program is accessing it and that sometimes this flag fails to be ‘unset’. I think I need to know how to ‘unset’ the flag so to speak, but can’t find the instructions I need anywhere online.
What to do next?
Matt
The only reason avast might be accessing it is if you are working with the CDROM copying to it for instance or if you have some how changed the default settings (but that should really only have any effect on shut-down) or a scan was being done of the removable media.
Check the Task Manager and see if any of the avast processes are using CPU time when this problem occurs.
Have (or did) you have another AV installed in this system, if so what and how did you get rid of it ?
Task Manager says the following (I presume avast) processes are running:
alg (this may be a non-avast one - unsure)
ashDisp
ashMaiSv
ashServ
ashWebSv
aswUpdSv
Before avast I has ntlNetGuard which I uninstalled before installing avast.
Matt
PS The check boxes for testing removable media are all unchecked.
The idea of checking the task manager is to see if ashServ.exe or any other avast process was active and possibly scanning the CD. If no activity I can’t see how avast could be blocking it from being opened.
alg = application layer gateway, a windows process.
I don’t know if there might be anything left behind of the ntlNetGuard after uninstall. Not sure how you could test for this other than a registry editor looking for invalid entries.
Other than this I at a bit of a loss as to what else to suggest.
No worries.
Thanks for doing your best, David.
I’ll ask around elsewhere and if nothing else works I’ll swap to another anti-virus prog, though hopefully that won’t prove necessary.
Best wishes
Matt