My burners can't see CD-RW media. I had an LG CD burner that worked well for a while, then it just stoped reading CD-RW media. I bought a pioneer DVD/CD burner and the same behaviour. It seems that both drives read a brand new CD-RW media, but once it's been burned, they won't read it again. I've tested burnt CD-RWs in other drives and they are perfect. Could it be something in my computer? Or might it be my hardware? I'm using Win XP Pro / Nero 6. Please help me. I'm desperate!!
1. What's the model of the drive To determine the make and model as well as a host of information about your optical drives, a free program called InfoTools can do the trick. Start it up and under the Drive tab, it will list all the relevant specifications and capabilities of your burner. The actual name of your burner is listed in the drop-down box at the top (those numbers before the name of your burner are important too!). You can get InfoTools from http://www.cd-rw.org/software/cdr_software/cdr_tools/nero_info_tool.cfm 2. What speed is the RW media? Some older drives dont support newer RW media to well! (and i can speak from experience about LG burners)
Okay, the first drive that stoped responding is HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8160B. The second drive is PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-106D. I've used Office Depot, Verbatim, Maxell, Sony, Pengo and other generic High Speed and Standard Speed CD-RW media and they all seem to behave the same way. Both drives are High Speed compatible and when brand new they would burn, read, erase and re-burn High Speed CD-RWs, however after a couple months or so they seem to "see" High Speed CD-RW only if they are brand new, once I've burnt them, they drives won't "see" them (In nero it reports the drive as "empty"). After a while that I can't read High Speed media, then they start to not read Standard Speed media. My PC specs are: HT-Pentium 4, 2.40CGhz, 500 MB RAM, 1 60 GB HDD and 1 80 GB HDD, the 2 CD-RW / DVD-RW drives, Nvidia FX5200 128 MB graphics card, Sound Blaster Live sound card, running Windows XP PRO.
One more thing, I have another computer: PIII, running Win XP Home with a MITSUMI CR-4804TE drive (Not High Speed compatible). I've tested some of the Standard Speed CD-RWs in that machine and I can read/erase them with no problems at all. Both machines have Nero 6 and the latest ASPI drivers. What could be wrong?
I hit a very similar problem in the last few days. I found I could no longer read CD-R disks. When I place a know-good written CD-R disk in my Pioneer DVR-A06U DVD+/-R/RW drive and attempt to open it with Windows Explorer, I get a "Please insert a disk into drive x:" message window (Win2k's Computer Manager indicates no media is loaded). The four other systems are able to read the the disk without a problem. I tried four brands of CD-R disks with the same result. The drive has no problem reading DVD-R disks and commercially produced CD-ROMs and DVDs. I have not tried CD-RWs. Another application which compares directories (WMatch) also does not recognize a CD-R. However, if I place one of those unreadable CD-Rs in the drive and attempt to copy it using Nero, I get a perfect copy. Nero is able to read the unreadable and make a good copy, but Windows will not recognize the disk! Nero comes with a diag program called InfoTool and it is able to correctly extract various information about the CD-R (type, Capacity, file system, title, ...). As a test, I swapped the Pioneer DVD drive out replacing it with a New Toshiba SDF-R5272. Same problem. I've had the Pioneer since November 2003 and I know I've read CD-Rs before. I know I read a CD-R (which no longer can be read) around the first of July. This problem must have to do with Windows. I have to believe it has to do with a Windows update or application I installed led since then. I'll take a bone from anybody who has one to offer me. ASUS A7V8X AMD Athlon XP 2400 1.5G PC2100 DDR RAM Award Modular BIOS V6.0 Windows 2K 5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195 (Updated to this date) 360G Disk (3x120G) Matrox P650 (Dual Head)
I too am having the exact same problem here as well. CD's that I have burned (on the same machine with the same drive) can't be read. I have even swapped in different CD-ROM's ... ideally I would use my LG 4880B combo drive but it won't let me read what I burn. Did anybody find a resolution to this?
Hi, It may help to install or update your ASPI layer. ASPI is a driver layer that sits between your drives and software. ForceASPI is a good one so here's alink to the download and instructions: http://club.cdfreaks.com/lite/t-101614.html If this doesn't help then we'll go from there
I've already tried the ASPI thing and it didn't work. I'm forced to believe it must me some kind of laser lens wearing out? But definitely it is something mechanical. I know it has nothing to do with the software, because I've tested the same unit on DOS, Windows 95, 98 and XP with SP1 and SP2 and it has the same behaviour.
What speed are you burning the discs at? Have you tried drastically slowing the burn speed for testing purposes? Faster isn't always better in the burning world. I've a 52X Plextor Premium and never burn faster than 24X to avoid issues such as yours
