What fundamental mistake am I making with my Pioneer DVR106?

[cakeypig]

have just bought a Pioneer DVR-106 and cannot write to CD or DVD media with it (something of a disadvantage for a DVD writer).

The facts are these: The drive is installed as 'master' on 2nd IDE, it came with firmware 1.06 (the latest) and I haven't messed about with drivers because I'm using XP home. My PC has 512MB ram, 2Ghz P4 and plenty of HD space. It plays CDs and DVDs with no problems. When I try to write a disc (whether using Nero, Decrypter or dragging and dropping in XP) everthing seems OK at first, but then the the 'busy' light goes off and the 'percentage written' stops increasing. Meanwhile, the 'time taken' keeps increasing and doesn't stop when it should do. In fact it doesn't stop at all until I crash out by pressing control-alt-delete and choosing to 'end now'. I have tried and failed with Mirror DVD-R 4x, Bulkpaq DVD-R 4x, TDK DVD+RW 2x, Datawrite DVD-RW 2x, Infiniti DVD-RW 2x and Memorex CD-R 48x. The one success I have had was when I first used the drive: I dragged and dropped a couple of files to a CD-RW that a friend had lent me to test with (before I'd bought my own discs). When I got some discs I was unable to replicate this success.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Unlike some people in these forums, I don't mind if people poke fun at my misfortune/incompetence, just so long as they also pass on some helpful ideas too! Thanks.

[crazeplaya]

Two options, either it's a software problem, which seems unlikely if it worked once before (unless you have changed something). But more than likely it is a fault with the hardware, contact the manufacturer or the retailer where you bought it to see if they can help

One thing you could try is uninstalling the device in windows through device manager and then restarting the computer, letting windows reinstalling the drive and then try again (probably won't work, but worth a try)

[funkguy4]

Ppl usually do firmware upgrades and see..... 8)