i hav a hp dvd writer 420i..it used 2 work well.. now it says i the blank disc i hav in there is not blank..i can burn data disc with a cd...ive read that i should disable the dma...i thought i ask here first tho..thnx 4 ur help...
you burner is at least 2 yrs old now. And you are probably using newer media to burn on that your drive doesn't recognize to burn to! don't use the 16x media! burn the 8x media and burn no faster than 4x and I bet you'll be able to burn again. My suggestion is to go online and buy the best media you can get, Taiyo Yuden. You can buy TYs at supermediastore.com, meritline.com, rima.com and other online stores. If you go to the CompUSA, Circutcity or other stores then try to buy Made In Japan media..... check the label of the box or spindle.... it will be hard to find but well worth it! Next choice would be to buy Verbatim but not the ones made in India!
I'll almost bet it's a firmware issue,especially if your were using slower speed media before and now into the faster speed media. 1st thing to do-if you got XP: is go into device manager,locate your HP 420i,uninstall drivers,and reboot. Sometimes dvd drives can get lost. If you still have the same issue after that,then most likely firmware issue. Firmware controls the writing strategy for drives.HP drives are well known for having very few firmware updates-to keep up with the newer media. By issuing few updates if any,it's a way of them telling us we better update to newer dvd-rw drives to keep up with the faster speed of blank media. http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/support.html I couldn't locate any info on that drive. Try HP main website and look for the latest firmware version for that drive. You need to know your current version as well. Here's a free program that'll tell you the firmware version-look to the right of your drives model#: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd-r_tools/dvd_identifier.cfm
I've got the HP 640c and there hasn't been any firmware updates since it came bundled in my pc-almost 3 yrs.. It's a very fine reader and I occasionally use the lightscribe. You may have to try to locate the slower 8x speed media.
