Icon for CD drive disappears and reappears every few seconds In one of our company MacBooks (MacBook7,1), the CD drive acts weirdly - any time a CD is inserted, the icon will appear for a few seconds in the desktop and finder, then disappear for another few seconds. This keeps happening, and the CD can't be accessed.

I'm totally new to the Mac environment and workflow, so excuse me if the answer is fairly simple.
Sounds like the CD drive is malfunctioning. This could be caused by many different problems, from partially detached cables inside the laptop to just a dirty CD slot and/or laser lens. One simple weird trick is to take a can of compressed air and give the CD slot a blow-out when not loaded with a disc. 

There are CD laser lens cleaning discs, including this version with a 3.5" floppy disc cleaner included!