I have a Dell demension 2350 with windows xp pro as my os i have a regular cd drive and the samsung cd r rw sw 248f for burning dvd's and cd's. when i first bought the computer 2 years ago i was able to burn dvd's cd's with no problem. then my computer contracted a virus that caused the whole hard drive to crash ever since the new download of the OS system im using now i've never been able to burn Dvd's or cd's since i tried going to the dell website and downloading the drivers specificly for the samsung drive that came with my computer but it says it applies to the Roxio easy cd creator (which was previously installed on the computer before the crash). ive also downloaded a file called 200401281840202332_R605com0115 which was said to be a file update for the samsung drive that i have after i downloaded the file and did everthing it instructed me to do i restarted my computer and an icon next to the clock in the bottom right hand corner or my computer said new samsung cd r rw sw 248f hardware found and ready to use. well i figured that solved the problem so i clicked on my dvd burning program that i recently downloaded to try to burn the dvd and got this message: the following type of disc is required. the process will continue automaticly as soon as it has been inserted then it says REQUIRED: writable disc 796.56mb free and PRESENT: Not writable (no disc) 0.00kb i clicked on my computer and saw my samsung dvd drive and it said CD-RW Drive (F. but when i placed a blank DVD-R in there Nothing happens, its almost as if i never placed a cd in there at all. i tried clicking start right clicking on my computer the properties then hardware then device manager when i click on DVD/CD-Rom drives it says samsung cd r rw sw 248f ive tried everything i can think of to get this dvd burner to work. its the same burner that was in the computer when dell built it. i called dell but they were no help (i bought the computer from a woman on craigslist forgot her name and because of that they wont help me) so if anyone has any ideas please please let me know. you can go to dell.com and type in my service tag number: (501hr21) if that helps tell you what EXACTLY IS IN MY TOWER
I would start by removing any third party burning software like Nero, Roxio, etc. After they have been removed, Google Nero Clean Tool and Roxio Zap to ensure that they are truly gone. You should have no burning software at all installed except the native XP CD burning capability. Try and burn a file to a CD using copy and paste. If the blank is not recognized, check the drive properties under My Computer and make sure the 'Recording' tab is selectable and that recording is enabled. If that doesn't help: Assuming that this burner is installed on the Secondary IDE Controler, Click 'My Computer' > 'Properties' > 'Hardware' > 'Device Manager' > 'IDE ATA...controllers', choose Secondary channel and 'Uninstall' Reboot after the uninstall. Try to copy and paste a file to a disk. If that doesn't work - uninstall the Primary channel (the assumtion is that the the hard drives are on the Primary and Optical drives are on the Secondary - but you can't be sure) If that fails, install ImgBurn and try to write a file to a disk. If that fails - still in ImgBurn - try clicking on 'Tools' > 'Drive' > 'Check for firmware updates. If no updates are available or if the update does nothing, go to the ImgBurn Forum and ask for help. http://forum.imgburn.com/
