Bit of a long shot this one, since your drive is new and all... I have cleaned the head of my audio cd player in the past. It had trouble positioning on tracks but was perfectly usable again after cleaning with a cotton swab stick and some alcohol. Haven't tried that on CD-ROMs though.
In Dutch we say "rest rusts" (rust roest) meaning that even something that is idle will deteriorate in time.
-Edit
The CD-ROM should have some self-alignment intelligence of its own. Maybe switching power on/off repeatedly a couple of times helps.
