Asus g50vt a1 and W7 disc drive problems

I have been using windows 7 for the past 5 months on my asus g50vt a1 laptop. I have been enjoying it very much. But I have one specific and growing problem: the disc drive. Whenever I put a disc into the computer to install new software/games I often get "Not Responding" errors....I can't open up the disc drive without hard restarting my computer and ejecting the disc before the computer boots into windows 7. I also get this when watching movies, sometimes the movies freeze and I have to reboot my computer to get them to work. Whenever I do manage to install a game, I have to use no-cd cracks to avoid this problem and so far that seems to work. However today I can't even get that far with Fallout 3... I insert the disc, I hit "Run Setup" and I get the window is "Not Responding" and no matter what I do I can't get it to work....I don't recall my disc drive having this problem in vista....so i don't think I broke it physically....

Whatever the case is, I am growing tired of dealing with the drive. Does anybody know how to fix this?

EDIT: I have gotten fallout 3 to install finally, but the problem still remains: This disc drive is a pain in the ***

 

Most likely the DVD drive is failing. They don't cost much and are easy to replace.

Cheers,

 

Even in a laptop it's easy to replace? Can I upgrade to bluray if I want to?

 

Very easy and yes, you can upgrade to Bluray. I've changed out the G50VT and now my new G72.

Cheers,