Needing some expert's opinion!!!

[Yuran]

Hi everyone! I dont't know if this is the right place to post this doubt i have and if not my aplogies to the moderators and here it goes!!!
i've had my dvd-rom for almost a year now and i "think" (i need your opinion) that it's life time is almost over! :P Well for the last year i've been burning, recording, formating, etc..,etc.. everything with my dvd-rom but now there's a weird problem with it. There are things that i can still do like backups of original DVD's, i can still record this to a blank DVD, i can burn CD's recordable or rewritable, play music cd's and original dvd's and also pirates and install or play games. Now i can't format either rewritable DVD's and rewritable CD's, i can't burn a dvd movie from the hard disk to the blank dvd recordable or rewritable, i've tried several apps to format or to burn and it just stops and gives error messages, before i was able to put a rewritable dvd not empty into the drive and when i wanted to burn something over it the software would automatically erase the dvd and burn the new movie or data, etccc... I updated the driver, installed the original drivers, i formated the pc and started all over again and nothing, i'm out of ideas! Well there's one more thing i can try which is i go to the device manager, disable my dvd-rom and then i reboot and windows will detect the drive again and maybe it will work. What do you think?? If this doesn't work what can i do more??? Most probably buy a new dvd-rom/writer right???? Thanks in advance for all the help i can get!

[redwudz]

You gave a lot of good info except which DVD writer you are using. It really helps to fill out the computer profile. But, from what you describe, you are probably right. You could try cleaning the lens, but if you have an older burner, now is probably a good time as any to upgrade. The prices are reasonable. If you haven't changed your media or software, the burner would be suspect if you are having problems. You could take the burner apart (carefully) and clean the lens with a Q-tip and denatured alcohol and hope for the best; but if you have a lot of hours on the drive, it may be having other problems. I would prefer to use a DVD-ROM (reader) and a seperate DVD-RW (burner) as the best setup. Causes a lot less wear on a expensive burner.

[jaxxboss]

I read ur stuff 3 times and it gave me a headache dude.

First of all, don't call it a dvd rom if it is a writer. ROM=Read Only.
Next, u say u can still record this to a blank DVD, can burn CD's recordable or rewritable. Then u go on and say that you can't burn a dvd movie from the hard disk to the blank dvd recordable or rewritable. Thats confusing dude.

I have to go take an aspirin.

By the way, if nothing works, buy a new writer they are cheap nowadays.

[Vanderlow]

On two of my plextor Cd-rws the first thing to go was the rewriteable function. The write-once still lasted.