HELP! DVD Writer Won't Recognise Disks and Won't Burn

[funkyrayuk]

Can someone please help?

I've looked all over for the solution to this problem but I haven't been able to find one that has worked.

I've got a Philips DVDR1625K DVD writer that has suddenly stopped working. The tray ejects and the light on the front still works but when I put a disk in it doesn't recognise that there's anything on the disk and if it's blank it doesn't recognise it and ejects it out.

As far as I'm aware the only new peice of software I have installed recently was the latest version of Avi2Dvd. I couldn't see how this could have affected it but I uninstalled it anyway and it still didn't work.

I've used the Nero InfoTool and it says there's no disk inserted when there is.

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be?

[Shadowmistress]

This probably won't help you as it's one of those unexplained things...
I had the exact same problem. My drive gave up and it wouldn't read any disk and I couldn't fix it for weeks. What had happend was that I'd popped in a dvd I'd made before and opened it in dvdlab to extract some pics I stored on it. Well, I think my Power dvd program tried to take over playing the disc but was too slow in loading and never really came up on the screen. I had it open in dvdlab and my comp just sorta locked for a second. After that, no disk would play.

For weeks I tried everything until one day I decided to try that same disk again and opened it in dvdlab. Once it was opened for some reason my drive unlocked and returned to normal and I can play all my disks again.

My uninformed, shot in the dark theory is that there must be something written to memory somewhere that makes the drive think it's in use. But that could be bullshit so don't quote me on it...

[funkyrayuk]

thanks shadomistress, i don't think it's the same for me, i don't recall anything like that happening.
Any other ideas on what the problem could be and how to fix it?
I'm gonna try it in a friend's system tonight so I'll find out if it's a hardware or sofware issue.
I'm hoping it's software cos I don't have the receipt for the writer.

[ROF]

It doesn't recognize any discs? CDs? DVDs? Pressed? Burnt? Nothing at all? Have you tried using the add/remove hardware in the control panel to remove the drive and then restart windows allowing it find?

[Guy_Fawkes]

A friend had a problem very close to yours. he disabled DVD43 and the burner started to work again. He was using NERO 7. I've heard ANYDVD and DVD43 conflict with each other

[funkyrayuk]

I tried it in my friends system and it didn't work in that either so I guess it's broken.
Must be a lens problem!!

[MJA]

try flashing the drive,if it doesn't work then your dvd writer is dead.The good news is dvd writers are cheap $39/$40