how do you fix a lost interrupt error?

["Wathen, Metherion" <MWathen@bsalifestructures.com>]

Anyone got any ideas on how to properly exit from a lost interrupt error?
Occasionally my cdrom will hang and I get this: 'hdc: lost interrupt'
Most often occurs when I've been swapping cdroms a lot looking for something.
it'll run like that forever if i let it
usually i hit the reset button to get out of it, there's got to be a better way tho'
tried ^C
tried to logout/login
tried to switch consoles and invoke kill, but the error message just followed me.

Any advice welcome.
mw