CD/DVD drives just... plain won't work.

[WWR]

I have a CD-RW drive and a DVD-RW drive both made by MSI that show up as "ATAPI CD-RW52XMAX" and "ATAPI DVD RW8XMAX" respectively in the Device Manager.

Now for a number of years since I got them they have worked just fine, ripping, burning CDs and reading CDs with no problems at all. But for reason a few months ago I noticed a strange oddity, when I opened My Computer after changing the CD in the drives, it still showed the previous CD as being in the drive, when I explored it, it would show me the contents of the CD that was actually in there. It had no effect on my computer so I shrugged it off as being a small glitch. Things got worse from this point.

It got to the point where installer programs with more than 2 discs started having problems, they would read from the CDs in the drives, but when I changed the CDs over it would still read the previous CD as being in the drive, the only way I could get around this was to disable the drive through the Device Manager then re-enable it, it would then show the change, but that would only work once. This is when I started getting a little worried, but not too much as I started just ripping my fave games to image files then using D-Tools with multiple virtual drives.

Now the problem has gotten even worse, I can no longer burn image files, the reason being whenever I have a blank CD in the drive when I'm attempting to burn something it will always ask me to insert a blank disc, even though there was one in the drive, I tried several different discs in each drive, thinking it may have been an old used CD, but this didn't change. I tried this one more time a couple of nights ago trying to burn some files to a CD, again Windows asked me to insert a blank CD into the drive, so I ejected the blank CD and re-inserted it, but it still asked me to insert a blank CD.

Thinking this may be a problem with my CDs I tried it with my dad's laptop that has a DVD-RW drive, it worked first time, burned the files perfectly.

I have no idea what's caused this problem or how to remedy it, could someone shine some light on the problem and/or solution?

Many thanks. :)

 

[donkey42]

first of all, you didn't say what brand (make) of media you are using, as cheap discs fail often, personally i will only use TDK DVD RW & i don't use CDr or CD RW, the problem may also be the drives, although, it's a big coincidence the same thing is happening with both drives, but not impossible.

have you recently flashed the firmware of either drive ?

it may also be worth finding out if an updated firmware is available from MSI

also, i think either or both CD-RW & DVD RW drives use different lasers, 1 to read & 1 to write, can you write anything to a TDK disc on either drive ?

 

[WWR]

I haven't touched the firmware of either drives since I got them. The media doesn't seem to be the issue as I've been using the same brand of discs since I got this machine about 3-4 years ago, never had a problem in all that time until this occurred. Plus the same disc that wouldn't be recognised as a blank disc worked perfectly in the laptop downstairs.

I can't write anything to any kind of blank disc, CD or DVD with either drive, both just say there's nothing in the drive, the drives themselves fail to refresh the disc that is inside and they both fail to recognise a blank CD is in the drive everywhere except My Computer, that will register the discs as blank if I reboot the machine with the blank disc in the drive, but all other programs tell me there's no disc in the drive.

 

[WWR]

Nevermind, a friend of mine helped me out and the problem is fixed.