The Mac Pro has an app called "Disc Utility". (Running Leopard 10.5.?, recently updated to newest version)

When I try to open the disc utility I cannot. The window opens and says 'searching HDD' and just keeps going. I left it running for 18 hours and it never opened the utility itself. The little rotating icon just kept rotating. What do I do to repair this?

Also, the optical drive cannot be opened using the keyboard. These problems both occurred about the same time. I opened the cpu and removed the optical drive to get the disc out as I knew no other way. Followed all the safety rules for grounding etc. It was after I reinstalled the optical drive that the keyboard command to open it stopped working.

Any idea if these two probs are related? What can I do to fix? Thanks.