CD/DVD Burner Drive Issue

[Elesirdur]

Encountered something weird last night with my CD/DRV burner. When there is no disc in the drive it lists, in Windows Explorer, as CD/DVD-Ram drive. However, when I pop a blank DVD-R in, the drive now shows up in Windows Explorer as a CD/RW drive and I cannot access the DVD disk. Even further, if I check the device's properties it does show that it is a DVD drive, even when a disc is in.

This is really peculiar and has only happened in the last few days. I've tried uninstalling the hardware from the Hardware Manager, restarting, and letting Windows XP find the device, but the same thing just keeps happening.

I've also disabled any virtual drives I had running with Alcohol 120% and done a driver update through the Hardware Manager, all to no avail.

Any suggestions BG?

[Daahan]

I had a similar problem a while ago when I was using a Dell Dimension computer.

When I called them to see what was up, they had me open up the computer and reattach a bunch of wires that were connected to the actual drives. After all the switching around and the plugging and un-plugging, they ended being fine. If you know what you're doing I guess you can go inside your tower and do that. It was the flat gray wires that were about 2 inches in width.

Unless you know what you're doing, don't try this. Because I'm not a professional and don't want your PC to get fucked up, but it could be a place where you can start looking for a resolution to the problem.

[SephYuyX]

Thats called reseating, and generally a good idea.

Basics to fix these wierd problems:
Restart PC, if that doesnt work then shut down and reseat everything, including ram, if that doesnt work, (make sure you have the drivers) try going to device properties and find the drive, then uninstall it, restarte the PC and reinstall the drivers.

If none of that works.. well, be a bit more descriptive, when did this happen, what was the last thing you did, when was the last time it worked, etc.

[Elesirdur]

I'm at the office right now, but my thought last night was to switch around the ATA cable connections on my two drives (Have a CD-R drive in there as well too) and see if that solved things. I was trying to burn some Top Gear episodes for my girlfriend before I took her home so I didn't want to spend 30 minutes futzing around with it. I'll let you know how it goes after I swap the ATA connections.

[Elesirdur]

Okay, a bit of an update on this.

I tried switching the Serial-ATA cables between my DVD and CD drive to no avail (yes I did change the jumpers from master to slave on the appropriate dirves). The I just removed the CD drive all together and only have the DVD drive hooked up in the master configuration, still not able to read DVD-Rs. Now, I have only tried like 2 discs, but they're from different manufacturers. Regular DVD discs, games, movies, etc. all read just fine.

Any thoughts?

[Cephius]

I noticed you did a driver update through the hardware manager... windows usually does a pretty poor job of locating the correct drivers for any hardware even if it exists on your system somewhere. Have you tried going to the manufacturers website and downloading the latest drivers for your drive? Seems like a long shot but you never know..

[Elesirdur]

I noticed you did a driver update through the hardware manager... windows usually does a pretty poor job of locating the correct drivers for any hardware even if it exists on your system somewhere. Have you tried going to the manufacturers website and downloading the latest drivers for your drive? Seems like a long shot but you never know..

I have. There is no hardware-specific driver for this unit, it's all provided by Microsoft. I also have the latest firmware edition.

[Sigi]

Try going to a previous firmware revision *if possible*

Bar that, contact system manufacturer/drive manufacturer if self-built. You could have a failing drive.