HP740I will not recoginze blank DVD's either + or -

[tchambers]

Have not used this burner for dvd's since new, 8 months ago. Burned one dvd and went to burn another, and the software and even in windows explorer, claims that there is no disc in the drive. Playing around with it the other night, all of a sudden, a blank dvd showed up in the Nero Info screen, so I quickly tried to burn a file and low and behold, half way through, it failed. I have unloaded and reloaded Nero about 5 times. I have downloaded the driver updates from HP. It seems to be very unstable. I have tried several brands of blank dvds. If I put a burned dvd in the drive, it recognizes it in windows explorer. I can burn cd's?

[redwudz]

Nero generates a very thorough log file when a burn fails. You might want to take a look at that and see what the error was when it failed. First thing to always try is different DVD media. That's the most common cause of bad burns.

Since you have Nero, you might also see what Nero InfoTool tells you. It may be something to do with the software, you can try different burning programs, but that would have little to do with recognizing the disc. There is also a slight chance this is all caused by a virus/trojan, you should do a through scan. If this happened suddenly, with no hardware changes, a system restore to an early date is possibly a option.

But what you describe as intermittent reading/writing sounds more like a burner problem. Burning CDs doesn't mean much as that's a different laser.

A couple of things you can try after different media: See if there is an upgrade for the burner firmware, unless that's what you mean by driver updates. If that fails, try cleaning the laser lens. At that point you have little to lose.

If all the above fails, consider replacing the burner.

[tchambers]

Thanks, but I have done pretty much all of that. I will try a scan, but I have resolved myself to the fact that the sacred HP burner is bad. I have asked Tiger Direct for a RMA for a burner that was purchased back in October 05, I am sure they will tell me no go. I can purchase the newer 840I locally for about 70$. For that small amount, it is worth a try......