DVD drive problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter stevespeed
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stevespeed

Hi, I hope someone can help with this confusing problem.

I have a Dell Pentium 4 machine running Windows XP Media Centre Edition. I
run McAfee AV/firewall etc. with online update and I think my machine is
clean. I have a hardware problem that started after I got into the IE8 then
XP SP3 problem that others have had. I wanted to un-install IE8 because I
had installed it over IE7 with add-ons and toolbars which caused problems.
As we all know this is difficult! but somehow I got back to IE7 and I think I
don't have SP3 anymore though I am not sure. The hardware side of this is
that after I had gone through all this trouble I found that my DVD drive,
(some Dell unmarked black box thing) had stopped working and couldn't be
found in Device manager or My Computer etc. So I thought, driver problem. I
tried driver re-install, update, all the software stuff, I tried physical
removal, re-boot, close down, physical re-install and re-boot, search for new
hardware, couldn't make it work. So I thought, fatal corruption of firmware
or just failure of cheap 18 month old unit, so I bought a new drive. a
Pioneer DVR-116DBK 20x Internal DVDRW, which went in fine and seemed to work.
Unfortunately I have now found that though I can play audio from the drive,
read from the drive and explore, load and install from the drive I cannot
write data too it. When I look in "My Computer" the drive is shown as CD
Drive D: with the icon saying DVD-RW as per disc, yet when I try to double
click on it I get, "D:\ is not accessible, incorrect function". This happens
if the drive is empty, has blank media in it or data discs I wrote with my
old drive. When I try to back-up my account files and suchlike material I get
denied all access and cannot read my old back-up discs. If it has an audio
disc or a disc with photos on they are accessible and can play or upload.

When I look in "Computer Management, Disc Management" at the drive with one
of my old data discs in it shows the drive as being healthy. There is no
info in the lower section but the upper part of the display shows, partition,
basic, healthy, capacity 0%, free space 0%, %free 100%, Fault Tolerance No,
Overhead 0%. When I put a program disc in it shows up in the top display and
in the graphic at the bottom, perfectly normally.

With audio, I can write too and playback from discs, it's just data that
won't work, so now I am very confused. If anyone has any ideas I would be
glad to hear them.


stevespeed
 
Hi Bob, Thanks for the response but I find it a bit confusing. Windows
"sees" my drive and names it correctly in Device Manager, also I can access
and install programs on CD or DVD from the drive. Maybe some of the data
programs on my computer don't recognize the drive, that may be a part of the
problem. One thing I notice from device manager, it says that the driver I
am running is "provided by Microsoft" and dates from 2001, that sounds like
it could be a problem to me, so I will try to get an updated driver from
Pioneer. I have found that difficult to do in the past, so if anyone out
there knows where to obtain such a thing without getting into the "pay us $20
and we'll update all your drivers with our super program" scenario, I would
love your help, thanks.
 
Thanks for the link to pioneer drivers, there isn't one listed for my drive,
they don't seem to make the drivers available for re-installation, just when
there is an update or whatever.

I have been through all the Windows fixes and troubleshooting without
success. I did the "fix this for me" thing on MS website, which I thought
would help but it didn't. So I am still confused!

Sorry to take so long to respond, my hotmail account seems to think that MS
discussion board notifications are spam, why doesn't that suprise me?
 
I ran the MS fix and have done all the troubleshooting stuff. I thought the
"fix it for me" thing on MS website would help but it didn't.

Pioneer don't list a driver for my drive, they don't seem to list drivers
just for re-installing but only when there is an update or whatever.

Sorry to take so long to respond, my hotmail account seems to think that MS
discussion group notifications are spam!

Thanks,
 
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