DVD-Rom firmware virus infected ?

[SLO]

Hello,

Can a DVD-Rom firmware be infected by a virus ?

Here is what happened to me:

I have installed XP on a friend's computer.

Everything worked fine untill i tried to install a driver for a Samsung
SD-612B DVD-Rom player.

I found that driver on www.driverguide.com.

I stupidly installed this driver before i read comments about it saying it
was a virus...

Then at the next boot, the DVD-Rom was not recognized anymore by the
motherboard's BIOS...
Then a strange noise appeared coming from the DVD-Rom, like it was spinning
crazily...

I change the IDE port where this drive was connected and then it was
detected by the BIOS. Windows started and the drive was present but
unusable, like dead : it even does not open...

I installed that drive on my computer to see if it was because of my
friend's computer but the drive seems still dead. (But still detected by
BIOS)

What's worst is since that, my computer does not boot under XP, but only
under Linux. And it seems like the c:\windows\system32\ directory is
unreachable...

I wonder if it is a kind of virus propagating through driver's firmwares...
Or maybe this bad driver as damaged my DVD-Rom firmware, making it unusable
and maybe XP didn't like it...

Does anybody have heard about that kind of virus ?

Is it possible to re-program the DVD-Rom's firmware to re-take it to life
again ? (even the hard way : i mean with a home made hard-ware EEPROM
programmer)

Thanks in advance.