I'm not quite sure what the magic bullet is, but a bunch of users on the macfixit.com OS X forum noted that reinstalling the 10.2.3 Combo Update fixes various problems, in their case many of the CD-RW issues.
For me, it fixed a completely different problem - namely that my menu extras had suddenly stopped functioning.
Try this if you have really weird, seemingly unexplained issues with OS X after upgrading to 10.2.3.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030106103400602