pioneer 104 stopped recognising dvd-rw

[curryman]

strange one this,
when i first had my writer i used to write to dvdrw for testing purposes and would then play in my standalone with no problems at all.
if i liked the final play i would burn again to dvdr.
now all of a sudden the writer will not even recognise the fact that there is a disc in the drive, I've tried to different media which both previously worked ( datasafe and white label ) also tried numerous programs including workshop, nero, easy dvd creator and tsunami dvd author - they either freeze or like i said tell me there is no disc in drive, i'm at aloss, it's not the end of the world, writing to dvdr is fine but it's just eating at me as to why this has suddenly occured,
what do you think - faulty drive ?

[VinnySem]

try an unused DVD-RW, a low-quality cheapoid disk might not give you the "1000" re-writes. Also, if you are using 2x4all firmware, you might have written to the DVD-RW at 2X when in fact you should not be able to, it's a known issue with the 2X4All FW's. Again, try a brand new RW disk.

[Leon Li]

I had a similar problem with my Pioneer A04 last week, it can only burn CD, but not DVD-R or DVD-RW, tried different firmware but no luck at all, finally I opened the DVD drive cover and use a cotton ball just wiped the laser len a little bit, guess what ? it works again, now I can burn DVD-R and DVD-RW like the way ia was before, hope this can solve your problem too.