DVD Burner Seen But Not Accessible

[Mad Scientist]

Please, I need help from the board on this computer problem I'm having.

I have a 5 year old HP desktop that I upgraded with a DVD burner about two years ago. It worked fine for a while but now is not accessible in Windows. I swapped the original CD Rom drive back in and it worked just fine. Swap the DVD drive back in: No workie.

I'm using Ashampoo for my DVD burning program by the way. (Or at least I WAS)

The drive will show up in Windows Explorer but not work. I've set the switches on the drives to all possible combinations (CS,SL,MA) with no success. The drive WILL spin up when I insert a DVD or CD however.

That's the confusing thing, it worked just fine for a while then stopped. The only thing I can think of is either the BIOS needs updating or the Drive is no good.

What do you guys think? Thanks in advance.

 

[Diuretic]

That's a bugger.

I can only guess. Anyway I would try a different burner programme - CDBurnerXP: Introduction and News

How about system restore if you're using Windows?

 

[KittenKoder]

Please, I need help from the board on this computer problem I'm having.

I have a 5 year old HP desktop that I upgraded with a DVD burner about two years ago. It worked fine for a while but now is not accessible in Windows. I swapped the original CD Rom drive back in and it worked just fine. Swap the DVD drive back in: No workie.

I'm using Ashampoo for my DVD burning program by the way. (Or at least I WAS)

The drive will show up in Windows Explorer but not work. I've set the switches on the drives to all possible combinations (CS,SL,MA) with no success. The drive WILL spin up when I insert a DVD or CD however.

That's the confusing thing, it worked just fine for a while then stopped. The only thing I can think of is either the BIOS needs updating or the Drive is no good.

What do you guys think? Thanks in advance.

Likely it seems that your Windoze updated a driver that it shouldn't have. If you have rollback check to see what was changed without your knowledge and roll back to when it was last working, then turn off automatic updates, you'll have to learn a bit about what to accept as updates. Or, if all else fails, switch to a better OS.

 

[Mad Scientist]

That's a bugger.
I can only guess. Anyway I would try a different burner programme - CDBurnerXP: Introduction and News
How about system restore if you're using Windows?

Well I didn't want to do that but I just may have to. I just hate having to re-install everything. Thanks for the link, but I think I'll stick with Ashampoo.

As a last resort I'm gonna' swap the working DVD drive from my Garage computer to this Desktop and see if that works. If it does then I'll know that DVD drive has probably gone "Tango Uniform".

 

[Mad Scientist]

Likely it seems that your Windoze updated a driver that it shouldn't have. If you have rollback check to see what was changed without your knowledge and roll back to when it was last working, then turn off automatic updates, you'll have to learn a bit about what to accept as updates. Or, if all else fails, switch to a better OS.

I've tried rolling back the drivers and re-installing, both without suck-cess.
Funny you mention switching OS's cause I have a copy of Ubuntu I wanna' put on the 'puter in my garage. But the problem is I can't burn a DVD and I can't simply transfer files because the Garage 'puter doesn't has an SD slot.

Argh!

 

[KittenKoder]

Likely it seems that your Windoze updated a driver that it shouldn't have. If you have rollback check to see what was changed without your knowledge and roll back to when it was last working, then turn off automatic updates, you'll have to learn a bit about what to accept as updates. Or, if all else fails, switch to a better OS.

I've tried rolling back the drivers and re-installing, both without suck-cess.
Funny you mention switching OS's cause I have a copy of Ubuntu I wanna' put on the 'puter in my garage. But the problem is I can't burn a DVD and I can't simply transfer files because the Garage 'puter doesn't has an SD slot.

Argh!

Ouch, that is a tough position. Roll back doesn't cover all the updates, so likely it was MS trying to force you to upgrade and spend more money. You may have to just order Ubuntu on their site (it's still free) and wait for their CD to arrive. Took only a week for me. If I was at your computer I would be able to tweak it myself, but sadly MS keeps changing their Windoze so much to keep people like me (who aren't under their over bearing contracts) from providing technical support any other way. Try installing a different program for now, it would be the best option to get it working temporarily.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Ouch, that is a tough position. Roll back doesn't cover all the updates, so likely it was MS trying to force you to upgrade and spend more money. You may have to just order Ubuntu on their site (it's still free) and wait for their CD to arrive. Took only a week for me. If I was at your computer I would be able to tweak it myself, but sadly MS keeps changing their Windoze so much to keep people like me (who aren't under their over bearing contracts) from providing technical support any other way. Try installing a different program for now, it would be the best option to get it working temporarily.

Well I got it all figured out late last night. I re-installed Windows on my house computer and now it works fine. I did find that one of my DVD drives is dead, it won't work on either computer. Oh well, nothing lasts forever. I installed Ubuntu on my garage computer and that works fine. So I have a DVD burner on my house computer and a regular CD Rom on my garage computer to use if I want to transfer files.

But I had a few difficulties installing Ubuntu. I downloaded 9.04 a few days ago (can you guess the problem already?) and burned it onto a CD using Ashampoo. Tried to boot with it but it wouldn't work. A little research about Ubuntu revealed that I need to install 8.04, then upgrade to 9.04 on desktops. Minor detail eh? Why didn't I see that before?

So I download, unpack, burn 8.04. Boots fine, installed OS and played with it a while. Big difference I notice is the speed of load and shutdown times. Windows just seems to hang on everything. I'll need to play around with it some more and learn it's ins and outs. Seems nice though, I think I'll keep it.

But now I have another problem. (Isn't that always the case with computers?) I can't seem to connect to my Linksys Broadband Router that I have setup in my house. In fact, the install CD that came with my Wireless G PCI Adapter won't even install to the OS!

Luckily my house computer works and so I've been cruising the Ubuntu forms and I may have found a solution. The garage is too far from my house so Ethernet isn't an option for me.