[hrkristian]

The CD thing was really common for me back in the XP era, which also happened to be the plethora of messed up CDs era.

It usually wasn't an OS level event, though, merely explorer.exe, so killing it sufficed if ejecting didn't. (Note: This was when ctrl-alt-del opened task manager directly, so you didn't have to right-click the explorer.exe managed task-bar, which would hang if you did)

[ksk]

Hmm, I don't particularly remember any CD ever crashing explorer, but I was and am very conscious of running a as-vanilla-as-possible install of windows when it comes to drivers, services and explorer plugins/BHOs/Shell Extensions/etc.