PLEASE HELP !!! : HP DVD200i has problems in burning CD-RW

[VideoMann]

I have an HP DVD200i drive that burns and reads DVD+R/+RW & CD-R/-RW.

Burning DVD+RW works fine just CD-R, CD-RW

I had it for over 1 year with no problems. I'm now having difficulty burning CD-RW and CD-R. I bought a box of Memorex 10CDs CD-RW x4 and out of the box 3 disks failed to burn correctly and the drive won't reformat them because it does not see the disk. I've
tried other disks around from HP and I'm having the same problem.

The error that I get on the burning is unable to "fix disk" towards the end of the session or "focusing errors". Cleaning the disk had no effect.

I'm not sure if the problem is in the HP drive or if the CD-RW disks come with minor blemishes in the manufacturing. I'm burning DVDs and sometimes CDs with no problem but 3 out of 10 Cds get trashed why ?

Are people having problems with the HP DVD200i after 1 yr ?
(PS: warranty expired, has original firmware no upgrades)

What do you think it is ? Can you help ?

By the way I've used Nero, Stomp, HP CD-DVD software all with the same problem so I don't think it is the burning software.

WindowsXP Pro
ASUS motherboard
P4 / 2GHz / RAMBUS memory


Thanks

[ofbarea]

I have an HP DVD200i and I had a similar problem a while ago.

In addition to the problem you are describing, my burner was not able to see DVD+RW that I erased to burn something else.

In my case the RW media was not recognized if I tried to format or read it after the operating system was booted. My workaround was to insert the media into the DVD200i and re-boot.

After rebooting the drive was able to see the media and I was able to format it.

This situation was happening with HP firmware 1.51. At that time I cleaned the DVD burned with a Maxell DVD cleaning disk. Also I upgraded the burned to the Ricoh 5125 1.64 firmware. Ricoh firmware will work because the DVD200i is a Ricoh 5125 but sold under HP brand.

Since I did the upgrade I haven’t seen any errors. If you are interested in trying this option, take a look at the following guide: https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/174580.php