Blank disk not recognized

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Guest

Around 2003, I had a system that included an HP DVD-RW and RecordNow! which
worked easily in writing to CD or DVD media.

That December, I purchased a Sony video camera, and installed the software
that came with it (USB Driver & ImageMixer). After those changes to my
system, RecordNow! would no longer write to the DVD. I constantly got the
error "Please insert a blank or rewritable disk..." even though there was
already a blank disk in place.

I spent what seemed like ages researching the cause of this. It's been a
while, but I thought it ended up being related to DLA, or atapi.sys, or IMAP,
or something like that... the point being that there appeared to be some
incompatibility between how RecordNow! and the Sony camera's software (either
ImageMixer or the USB driver) access the DVD-RW device.

Unfortunately, I can't remember what I had to do to fix it. I only remember
that I ended up not using ImageMixer, but stuck with ArcSoft Showbiz DVD,
Windows MovieMaker, RecordNow! and the Firewire (not USB) connection.

Totally forgetting all of this... a few days ago, I went over to a friend's
house to show her how to take videos off her Sony video camera. We installed
the USB driver and ImageMixer, and now she has the same trouble with
RecordNow! It continues to display the "... insert a blank or rewritable
disk..." error even when there is a valid disk in the drive.

I have seen this problem all over the web (a troubleshooting search of
"insert a blank or rewritable disk" leads to several occurances of this
problem). But, no one appears to have a clean resolution.

My guess is that I'll have to remove all of the software (DVD-RW driver,
RecordNow! ImageMixer and USB driver) and reinstall only the DVD-RW driver
and RecordNow! Before doing all this, any other tips would be welcome!
 
I would suggest that you uninstall the Sony software which came with the
camcorder, it's not needed at all. Windows Movie Maker will happily do what
you want to do which is capture from the digital camcorder to the PC.

Stick with the originally installed RecordNow! which is probably a 'lite'
version that came with your HP hardware... you also might want to think
about getting a full version... (www.roxio.com).

The DVD optical drive doesn't need a separaqte driver installed, it is
included with WindowsXP.
 
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