Rewritables failing, need some ideas

[watchmaker]

I have a NEC 3500AG and recently discovered that all of my rewritable DVDS while burning are failing after write. Rewritable CDs and ordinary DVD+Rs and DVD-Rs are burning and reading fine.

I'm getting the same problem with Nero and DVD Decrypter as well. After the burn, the media sits and spins in the drive on the computer, the set top kicks it out after a minute or two of trying to load. I've attempted to reformat these with no luck; Nero locks up looking for the media. The discs aren't brand new but they haven't been rewritten more than a few times. So far, I've lost four discs this way.

I've flashed to the latest firmware I could find, 2.19 I believe.

Any ideas?

Apologies if this is not the correct forum, newbie at posting.

[Barnabas]

Try doing a full erase on your DVDRW disks. If that fails, you might try a program called Super Blank. Hopefully it works for DVD-RW disks too. Works great on CD-RW disks that won't format.

http://www.infinadyne.com/super_blank.html

[oldfart13]

I use an old version of Sonic Record Now Deluxe that came with my old Pioneer A05 burner. It seems to work very well to erase stubborn discs though I have found a couple that got scratched by the burner that are now unuseable. Time to get some new ones I think. I bought some Made In Japan Sony +RWs recently that work great in my Liteon 5001, at only a couple dollars each. What is the error that you get? I have been using ImgBurn over Decryptor's burn engine as it's much newer software by the same author...

[watchmaker]

What is the error that you get?

The bad discs pretty much just sit in the drive and the light is on like it is looking for the disc but really never finds them. I can hear it spinning but it never can get a good read on it.

On the set top player it looks for the disc and eventually kicks it out as an unreadable disc.

[oldfart13]

Sounds like a scratched area where the TOC is written. I got that on the 2 bad discs. Try ripping the discs with DVD Decryptor and see what it says. Mine stop at a point in the rip and have to be ejected as they cannot be read even after 50 retries...

Oddly enough though I have never had a problem with the numerous DVD-RAM discs I have used in the past 2.5 years. I'm using some right now that are at least that old and they are reading and writing just fine...