XP SR2 and CD-R (XP SR2)

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I recently got brave enough to give SR2 another try. Since I upgraded to SR2, my DVD-R / CD-R is giving me trouble. The drive will see a blank DVD disk but will not see a blank CD disk. It will read a CD. It worked fine last week and no changes have been made except the update to SR2. Has anyone heard of something like this? I am using Roxio 6 and I uninstalled and reinstalled that program with no change. Are there any problems with un-installing SR2 and should I try that? Thanks.

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When something like this happened to me, it turned out I had a bad DVD/CD drive. Have you done any diagnostics on the drive itself, rather than software?

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Other than what I mentioned about trying a blank dvd, many cd-r’s, and reading a data cd, no. What diagnostics can I do? A bad drive did cross my mind, but that it recognizes a blank DVD puzzles me if the drive is bad. But I’ll try any suggestions you have Al. Thanks.

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The only other thing I’d suggest is checking the DVD drive’s website to see if there are any patches or any firmware updates for your drive. I had a Sony that bit the dust and after several phone calls and hoops to jump through, they replaced it for me since it was under warranty. Works fine on my SP2 system now.

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I gave the tech support a try first thing but the 1 year old drive is way obsolete and no support is available. NEC sold out to Sony on optical drives. And Sony only supports the new modern drives. Kind of funny.

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Gosh, I’m sorry they sold out! You haven’t said what model of drive you have but have you checked this page for the possibility that your model may be listed. Not that I am slamming tech support because there are plenty that offer excellent help, but sometimes there is information on the website that can be of use as well. Just a thought……..

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I don’t have any suggestions to add to yours and Skitterbug’s conversation – sorry. In my case, my Dell is still under warranty. I could read, burn and play CDs just fine but the drive would not recognize a DVD disk of any kind when inserted. A Dell tech walked me through the diagnostics that Dell “hides” on the machine’s hard drive. The CD/DVD failed, so Dell sent me a replacement.

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I had gone to that page Skitterbug. Thanks for the link. Thanks Al. I am thinking that if it is hardware it could be a laser gone bad? I think a different laser is used for CD and DVD. Maybe the CD one went bad. Thanks again.

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Have you checked the physical connections inside the PC?

Joe

--Joe

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Yes I did Joe. I even changed cables. Thanks.

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See Your CD-RW drive is not recognized as a rewritable drive in Windows XP Service Pack 2 or in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005.

Joe

--Joe

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That is interesting. I wonder if it applies? I clicked around the microsoft site and could only find a place where they want around $60 for support. I will just uninstall SR2. That is much cheaper than paying for something that might not work. Thanks for your help though. I think the best option is an uninstall at this point. I don’t know why in the world I keep doing silly things like upgrading anyway. This confirms my contention that if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

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If you can show Microsoft support that you have the problem they should not charge you to supply the fix. I’d try to get this fixed because soon SP-2 is the only XP version Microsoft will fix period.

Joe

--Joe

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I went through the support thing for email support and they asked for a credit card to charge me $59. I don’t think it is worth $59.00. I have never needed Microsoft to fix things before so whether or not they only “fix” SR2 is kind of irrelevant as far as I can see. But I do appreciate your suggestions and help. I am going to take off SR2 and see if that fixes the problem. If it does, I will have a valid reason to try to get MS to fix it free. If not, I probably need a new drive. It won’t cost me money to try that.

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Well now here is an update. I decided to take off SR2 just to check things out. I figured I can always put it back on. But just as I was about to do that, I decided to give the burner one more try. And the drive saw the blank CD. I then closed the burning program, opened the drive and tried it again. This time the blank CD was not seen in the burning software. I tried it twice more. On the third try, it again saw the blank CD. So now I doubt SR2 is the culprit. I suspect either the drive or the burning software which I did remove and re-install.

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Wow, I’m glad you made this discovery. I shuddered when you said you were gonna remove SP2 ’cause I can’t imagine it to be the cause of this flaky drive operation. OK, how about giving a freebie a try? Since I recently shed myself of Nero, I’ve burned a few CDs with CDBurnerXP Pro – free burning solution and it seems to work well. I had trouble with Roxio but it’s been a long time ago.

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I’ll look into that Big Al. Thanks for the link. My wife’s burner came with Nero and she likes that a lot.Her computer is a 98 machine. I have no experience with it other than installing it for her. I tried it long ago and didn’t care for it. I was thinking about giving Nero a try again. Like most other people I have had my share of problems with Roxio. But the ver6 I use has worked well up to now.

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Have you disabled the native XP CD burning capability? With Roxio & Nero their drag&drop functionality, DirectCD for Roxio & InCd for Nero, have been known to cause problems. Make sure you have any Roxio updates installed.

Joe

--Joe

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No Joe, I haven’t done that. Where do I find the disable burning program? That could have something to do with it. It’s worth a try. Thanks. I don’t even bother to install the drag and drop portion of the software. I got burned with that one a while back and lost a bunch of valuable data on a partially filled cd. Roxio 4 or so. It just decided it couldn’t read the cd any longer.

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See Windows XP CD Burning Secrets.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks for the link Joe. Lots of good info there. Unfortunately turning off the XP software didn’t help. And of course I did burn well over a 100 cd’s with this burner and software with things as they were. I am leaning toward Big Al’s suggestion that I have a burner going bad. Fortunately I have 3 other cd burners in the house and this one still does DVD’s. So I will limp along until I get the urge to replace it. I was going to try a different software package first but your tip gave me an idea. So I tried a drag and drop to the burner with the XP software re-enabled, and it didn’t see the blank cd either. Sounds like a hardware problem.

Thanks for the help everyone.

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Good thing you’ve got some others around. Also, the price of CD/DVD burners has gotten so low that replacing one is not the big deal it used to be.

Joe

--Joe

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Every time I’ve had this problem, it has been the fault of a failed, or failing, optical drive. Most don’t seem to last long these days, although I’ve got some iron horses from yesteryear that still work fine.

If you have the means, take the drive out of the system and install it into another machine. If it’s a hardware problem, it will follow the drive to its new home.

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I will try moving it just before throwing the drive in the trash. I’ve used that method before. Yesterday I had a 17″ monitor quit on my wifes computer. Moved it to another system and found it still dead. And the replacement works fine.

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