Had this drive for a few months, light usage, but now the door is sticking and I have to goose it with a paperclip in the release hole.

What's odd is, once I get it to open, it works fine on its own, until the next boot. Sticks again. Some gear getting out of whack or what?

Is there some simple maintianence I could try , don't want to return it under warranty if I dont have to . It's an oem , and has been flashed to newer benq fw.

Mine sticks sometimes now too, about a year old or so now, problem is almost no 1655's left. You might be able to open it up and see if the belt is slipping or it's out of alignment somewhere as most of these are pretty easy to tear down and put back together as long as you dont do something stupid.
I haven't torn into mine as it will open after I push the button a few times and still reads and burns fine.
I have opened up many dvd drives and burners and so far as long as it wasn't dead before hand they all went back together and worked afterwards.
They usually have a few ribbon cables that will unlock and disconnect and some gears, circuit boards, drive tray/lasar assembly so just note how its laid out and comes apart so you can put it back right afterwards.

No 1655's? I got one 2 weeks ago from Newegg. Still on there site with auto notify, which is what I used.

LiteOn bought em out and it seems the supply of true BenQ drives is drying up. Some places like Egg still dig them up from time to time and there might be a few left in rebadge boxes like Norwoods and such. Mine was from Staple's as LS I/O magic drive and even then some were LiteOn drives too.

Yeah, future doesnt look to bright for Q!

Don't worry guys! They're still releasing new models, x18 and x18+LightScribe, also Blu-Ray. All of these featuring SolidBurn.

Yeah but there still Lite-On drives now under the BenQ name.

As long as there is some sort of SolidBurn-type self-learning technology in place, I'm OK regardless if it's LiteOn or Philips/BenQ, or even Plextor.
The LiteOn camp have been tweaking their firmwares to very good results recently, so I wouldn't mind sampling a new Litey soon.

Don't know where you are from, I'm in Canada and I RMA'd my OEM DW1655 for the same problem and got a brand new retail DW1655 back in about 5 days, and I have to say I was surprised I was expecting a refurbed DW1655 or one of the new models...bravo to BenQ, although I'm not sure what the supply is like now.

You're lucky. When I RMAed my OEM 1655 last Christmas I expected a prompt service... Two months and many phonecalls later, they sent me a 1650 drive as replacement which I refused (I sent them a LightScribe drive and wanted the same model back obviously!). Another month passed by and after more expensive phonecalls (during which they had me waiting in queue for 30 min at a time) the sent me yet another 1650! I refused to accept delivery again, more phonecalls, more e-mails etc... A further full month after that, I eventualy got a new 1655 back! BenQ customer services sucks here in the UK...

Mines been doing the swicky drawer thing for months now. I have to hit the button multiple times before it opens. I haven't gotten brave enough to take it apart to see if I can fix it though.

Well Iguess it helps that the BenQ distribution centre (place to send the drive for RMA) is in the same city, plus Canada has a smaller population so the call centres are not outsourced or all that busy.

It's not only that. They only had one telephonist/customer services person (whose voice I got to know well after all the times I've has to speak to her), and she didn't know the difference between the 1650 and the 1655. I had to explain to her that the drive I sent was the Lightscribe model (1655), and she told me that as far as she knew both models featured Lightscribe... I almost lost my hair to that! We're talking about BenQ customer services people who don't even know the model features! She must have been a temp, or was probably filing her nails during her induction course...

Can you eject the drive from windows? Perhaps the problem is with the mechanical switch on the drive.

I looked inside, nothing wrong that can be seen. It just randomly doesnt work. Must be out of tolerance or some damn thing.

There's nothing to fix , so I can't fix it.

Benq support pretty clueless. Are you surprised?

Take off the front bezel and the tray front and clean it thouroughly. Worked for me on a few drives already (no BenQ included). It seems on some drives tolerance is so small (for noise reduction, ever tried a modern drive without front?) that even some dirt can keep the tray sticking. Another possibility is the small foam ring on the back of the tray front, when it gets old, it's getting sticky (no dirt, just aging). You can remove the foam, although the noise from your drive will increase a little.

A ring? Must be the rectangular foam surround?

Yes, that's the one. Sometimes it's only a strip. If it feels sticky, remove it. If the tray, when it opens the first time after it got stuck again, makes a sound like adhesive tape that gets removed, it's probably the foam causing the tray getting stuck.

Ok...I don't have those issues with my 3 1650s. Perhaps it will show up with time.

my 1640 also has the same symptom, but keep pressing reject button a few times, it will open, that I can live with since it produces such good burns

Can you eject from windows? If yes, then the switch at the burner may be defective.

I have also a 1655 with the door sticking, have to push very often to get it open.
With software(nero) it also fails(a lot of noise) and then opens, maybe nero keeps on opening the door til it opens.
But wenn i keep a dvd inside(full or empty) then it open alway directly.
If somebody knows the problem, please help.

i had a similar problem with a 1640, found out my kids spilled a drink and it went over the front of my poot, they wiped it up but the door was sticky to open, i found sticky syrup dried up in the door cover, i removed the tray cover and used a razor blade and scraped all the gunk off.
Try opening the tray and popping off the front cover, it lifts up and off the tray if you grasp the center and pull outward slighty and up, then see if the tray opens easier.
If so trim off the rubber material they use as a dust seal, it gets sticky with age.