cd not detected

[Robert]

I am trying to help a friend out with her dell computer. It is running
Windows XP and I believe she has Media Player 10 installed on it. She had
been writing cd's and the burner quit, so she asked me to install a dvd
burner for her.

I did, but to no avail. The burner came with Nero and we also installed
Real Player. It works under both of those programs, but when we try to burn
using MP it states "CD not detected in media player". I went through
microsoft's list of checks, go here & check this and check that. If I go to
My Computer and look, or attempt to write files from there, it does not
recognize the burner. Nothing MS recognizes the dvd rw, it sees it as a
cd-rom/dvd-rom. There is one place MS says (can't remember if that is in
admin tools, I think it is) to see if it has a check mark in the box to
allow it to burn. Well, the "record" tab (I think that is what it said)
doesn't even exist.

Now the funny part is, I have this same burner on my computer at home.
Running Win XP and MP10. The DVD burner works in all of the programs I
have. I'd live with it if it were me as I hate MP anyway. But that is what
she knows how to use. I've seen this brought up a lot, but I can't seem to
find a solution. Does anyone know how to fix it or why it works on my
computer and not hers?

 

[Rich Barry]

Robert, it maybe that Nero and Real Player are interfering with or
blocking out Media Player. Do you have those on your
computer? Also, rt click on the dvd player Icon in MyComputer select
Properties. There should be a Recording Tab.
If not then remove the dvd player from device manager and physically
remove it and then try reinstalling it.

 

[Robert]

Yes, both computers are running Nero, Real Player, and Media Player. I
didn't physically remove the drive from the "non-working" scenario.

Recording Tab is not present. So, I uninstalled it from the device manager
and rebooted. It shows that it has found the drive and it correctly
identifies the drive everywhere, it just doesn't give the recording options
in the two original scenarios.

I dug into the registry and found the drive listed as a "3" (read only
drive) and changed it to both a "2" and a "1" (rewriteable and writeable).
Neither of those changes seemed to work.

I remember one of the first jobs I had we bought gateway computers. If you
called tech support, they invariably said "reformat the harddrive" for any
kind of problem. That's what I'm fearful will need to be done, but I really
don't relish the thought of doing that and especially considering I can't
guarantee that whatever glitch is in there now won't be reloaded again in
the future.

This is really frustrating. Thanks for the input though. I may try to
physically remove the drive the next time I sit down with the computer
again.