I hate my PCRW804K17....nothing but trouble. Can someone advise me please?....here is my story.

Purchased this about a year ago. Got error messages when burning with East CD Creator...so got FlashTool 3.1_004 which fixed the problem. Things have been fine until recently when the green DISC-IN light flashes furiously for no reason and the system freezes. OK so I run the FLashtool again and things are ok for a time, then it starts later on again, only now I can still move the mouse cursor but otherwise the system halts. Sometimes it goes for long periods with no problem, other times it is constantly access the drive and I can not even get a chance to run anything or shutdown. When I switch off and reboot, the system even realises it is fed up with this drive and the system acts as if it is not there. Please help....
My stystem is Asus A7a266 with 1.33GHz Athlon, 256MB RAM, Windows 98.
Thanks
Marius