CD burner reads but doesn't burn

Factual Questions
1

My computer runs XP pro, has a DVD drive and a separate 48/?/? CD burner, and dates back to July 2005. I regularly back up my media files and documents, the last time being in February. For the last few weeks I’ve been unable to burn a CD. I copy the files I want, put in a blank disk, and click “write files to CD” from Windows explorer. Unfortunately, once I try to continue after naming my CD it tells me to put a CD in the drive regardless of the fact that there is, in fact, a blank CD-R in the drive. Opening and closing the drive doesn’t work, and it has done this with CDs from two separate stacks.

The computer knows when something is in the drive, and it can still read audio and installation CDs. I ran one of those CD cleaners and it played the silly audio instructions on it just fine. I did, however, forget to turn “repeat” off and the thing ended running for 3 35 minute cycles. I worried about damage from that, but it still reads CDs just fine.

Symantec, Adaware, Spybot, and AVG have not found anything suspicious, and my hardware profiles list everything as ok. Space was getting to be a premium on my hard drive recently, but I have cleared out some space such that there is actually more room on it now than there was before I was last able to use the burner.

This is quite frustrating. Any ideas as to what’s going on?

2

[QUOTE=Khan]
My computer runs XP pro, has a DVD drive and a separate 48/?/? CD burner, and dates back to July 2005. I regularly back up my media files and documents, the last time being in February. For the last few weeks I’ve been unable to burn a CD. I copy the files I want, put in a blank disk, and click “write files to CD” from Windows explorer. Unfortunately, once I try to continue after naming my CD it tells me to put a CD in the drive regardless of the fact that there is, in fact, a blank CD-R in the drive. Opening and closing the drive doesn’t work, and it has done this with CDs from two separate stacks.

The computer knows when something is in the drive, and it can still read audio and installation CDs. I ran one of those CD cleaners and it played the silly audio instructions on it just fine. I did, however, forget to turn “repeat” off and the thing ended running for 3 35 minute cycles. I worried about damage from that, but it still reads CDs just fine.

Symantec, Adaware, Spybot, and AVG have not found anything suspicious, and my hardware profiles list everything as ok. Space was getting to be a premium on my hard drive recently, but I have cleared out some space such that there is actually more room on it now than there was before I was last able to use the burner.

This is quite frustrating. Any ideas as to what’s going on?
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure WHY this happens, but I know it DOES happen.

Put a the old CD in the drive, copy to the HD, and recopy to the CD (after you erase the CD-RW…if it is a CD-RW). This usually happened after I burned a CD-RW
and then had to re-install WXP, and then tried to burn new files to the CD-RW…but not always.

Copying the CD to HDD and reburning the CD-RW always did the trick.

3

Also, Phillips CD-RW never work on my drive, but “cheap” Imation and “expensive” TDK and Sony do. YMMV

4

I’m not sure I follow you, but I’ve only been using CD-R’s so I can’t do what you suggest. It seems like you’re saying copy some information from a CD-RW, and then burn it back onto the same CD. Am I right?

5

It could just be that your CD writer has crapped out. I had the same sorts of problems with a not-very-old writer and just couldn’t believe that it could be the hardware. Replaced it out of frustration and problem solved.

6

I recently had the same problem while fixing a friend’s laptop. If I plugged my external DVD drive into his computer it treated every disk as not valid when I tried to copy off his data files. I installed the copy of Nero that I had and it recognised the blank DVDs. I can’t recall what crappy software he was running that just kept telling me Drive E is invalid.

7

This may not have anything to do with your situation, since you’re talking about CDs rather than DVDs. But, apparently, sometime between when I installed my DVD burner and now, makers of blank DVD-R’s changed to a different type that my burner doesn’t know how to handle. It still works fine with the old-style DVD’s (labeled 8x) but won’t recognize the newer ones (labeled 16x). Or at least, I haven’t yet figured out how to get it to.