Dell G7 Laptop startup issues with peripherals

Hello all,

I have a very specific startup issue with my Dell G7 15 7588.  This past week, I had problems with the laptop freezing on the Dell logo screen during startup and wakeup sequences.  The freeze would last anywhere from about 3 minutes to greater than 20 minutes.  I tried a number of solutions but ultimately isolated it to my external DVD drive.

The laptop will not startup or restore from hibernation if the DVD drive has a CD in it.

I do not normally keep CDs in the drive, but i know i have had them in before without issue as recently as 8 to 10 months ago.  I was attempting to rip a CD this week and only noticed the problem then.

The laptop is a Dell G7 15 7588, running Windows 10 Home with the most recent BIOS and fully updated Windows.  The DVD drive is a Pioneer DVR-XD09 with updated firmware and drivers (yes, it's very old but was not causing any issues until now).

Any ideas? Now that i know what causes it, i can at least ensure i remove the CD or drive each time I wakeup the computer, but it is annoying that it doesn't work properly.

Thanks