Up until recently I had no problems with my external burner (Liteon sohw-1633sx). Then, for no apparent reason, it started misbehaving. It records and plays CDs normally and plays DVDs. However, it won't record to DVD. When a blank DVD is put in, it's recognised as a CD but won't write to it. I upgraded it's firmware, tried different DVD types and brands and tried it on a different PC. No change. Running Nero on both machines, it goes through the motions, says that the burn has been successful, but the DVD remains blank. Apologies if I'm going over old road here, but so far I haven't been able to find a solution to this.
anydvd and dvd43 running at the sametime can cause this. im sure there are other apps too. think back and see if u have installed any new apps lately. also check in device manager to see if ur in pio mode instead of dma.
No new apps installed. The second PC was a clean install of WinXP. Secondary IDE running in DMA. The burner tends to make a grinding noise, like the disk is vibrating. As a newbie, I'm not sure about this but I assume that there are separate reading and writing heads for both CD and DVD mode. Is it possible that the DVD writing head is at fault, or am I way off base? (Many thanks for the responses so far, by the way. Much appreciated)
Already tried it, I'm afraid. No success. The fact that it failed on another PC where it worked previously makes me think that maybe it's not software related. I used a dvd cleaner to see if it would make a difference but that only would clean the play head, not the recording head, if my assumptions are correct. Any ideas welcome.
Just bought a BenQ external burner from Komplett. This has the exact same problem as the Liteon it's replacing. Looking at other forums on the internet, I'm getting the impression that this is a defect specific to external burners. Has it ever been identified officially as such?
Not saying it will fix anything, but try going into the Device Manager and Uninstall the drive. Then reboot and see if Windows picks the drive up properly. It's a plug and play system. If you're still having problems, give troubleshooting in the Device Manager a try. There's also Add Hardware in the Control Panel with troubleshooting options. I have a friend who uses external drives and he doesn't have any problems.
I have two liteys and a plex that came as external and a nec and a benq in external all with out any of the problems you have. If they both do the same thing on your machine I would start checking out the machine. Good luck
