When I insert some scratched CDs or DVDs and try to read them, the whole operating system (Win7 in my case) seems to hang. Looks like all hard drive I/O is also paralized and most Windows OS hangs. Why does this happens? Is there any other OS or configuration that does not have this issue?
I'm unable to test this on my newer systems because they dont have optical drives...
This may be related to either Windows architecture, the driver model, a problem with PATA/SATA design, but I am not sure which one is the culprit.
