How to get K3b to find optical drive?

[joe at actionline.com]

I have an external dvd burner connected to my computer,
but when I try to run K3b, the following message appears:

> No optical drive found.
> K3b did not find any optical device in your system.
> Solution: Make sure HAL daemon is running, it is used
> by K3b for finding devices.

How can I determine if the HAL daemon is running?
Or if it is not, what do I need to do to make sure that
it always does run?