DVD burner not working

[thegreenmonk]

Hello, ive had a Sony DVD RW DRU-870S dvd drive for a while now - it works fine when playing DVDs, however when I try to burn stuff to blank DVD+ it does not seem to work. The computer knows theres a drive there but insists it's a CD drive. This is rather annoying and has happened to the last 2 DVD drives I have had. I use DVD Flick for burning stuff as Nero crashed alot and didnt work for previous drives

Thanks in advance for any help

[snakedoc]

I have had problems with Sony drives in the past. This is why I get cheapo generic drives these days.

[cje]

Have you tried burning at a lower speed? Setting maximum or 52x can cause problems with some drive/ disc combinations. Try burning at 24x or lower speed.

[Mike]

The write head might have gone or might be a bit dusty (try a CD cleaning kit - but don't use the liquid solution which comes with it, just the cleaning disc). Otherwise it might be software related. If you are running 32bit version of windows then you can try installing an ASPI layer: http://www.afterdawn.com/software/cdr_software/cdr_tools/aspi.cfm
Also try some different writing software such as www.imgburn.com

[TheTranquilEye]

The computer knows theres a drive there but insists it's a CD drive.

This is the interesting bit. Where exactly do you see this? In My Computer? What does Device Manager tell you? Can it recognise the drive correctly?

Shame you've given up on Nero as it does have it's own diagnostic tool which will interrogate the drive.

Please post full system specs and what OS are you using and we'll attempt to find an answer.

TTE

[Mike]

I suspect he's running windows xp as xp does that - i.e. cannot make it's mind up about what to call a DVD drive

[TheTranquilEye]

I suspect he's running windows xp as xp does that - i.e. cannot make it's mind up about what to call a DVD drive

I've never encountered that Mike. Be interesting to see what Device Manager has to say though.

TTE

[thegreenmonk]

Specs are: Windows XP SP3, Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, P5Q-Pro motherboard, Geil 4gb DDR2 RAM (which XP cant use fully). ATI Radeon HD4800 Series, JLMS XJ-HD1665S SCSI CdRom Device (is a DVD drive), Sony DVD RW DRU-870S (this is the one ive got problems with, its on SATA btw). Is that enough?

[thegreenmonk]

Also cheers for the replies so far

[Ratty]

ive had this exact fault on my step dad's PC.

In your BIOS you need to see what your "SATA Configuration" in "Storage Configuration" is set to.

I expect that it is set to "Enhanced" and "IDE", you need the "IDE" one to be "AHCI"

Just a word of warning, changing this to AHCI should fix your problem, but may cause you a bluescreen on booting (meaning you may need to format, due to driver errors for the AHCI controller as it will also change your Hard Drives to AHCI)