i don't know for sure what could be causing your problem, but i won't leave
you with nothing. the last morsel of advice i can leave with you is check
Windows Hardware Compatibility List to see if your CD-RW brand/model is
compatible or not with Windows XP. i struggled with the same problem as you
for months. my attempt to upgrade the firmware failed with a meaningless
message like "DMA mode caused the update to fail. Use PIO mode instead."
finally i did what i should have done to begin with (check the Hardware
Compatibility List to see if the brand/model is compatible or not). that's
when i finally found out that my CD-RW brand/model is Not on the
Compatibility List. therefore, it Might work and might Not.
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm
the web site above won't solve the problem either, but it will explain the
complexity of it all more accurately than i can. in laymans' terms, this
world of CD-RW hardware and software might be best compared to an "Imaginary
World" where you cannot stick a floppy disk into a floppy disk drive and
count on being able to read and write, because (a) floppy disk drive
manufacturers do not always include instructions into the circuitry of the
floppy disk drive that is compatible with Windows, (b) even when they do,
Windows still fails sometimes to write reliably to the floopy disk drive,
(c) software updates are required to fix problems Windows had writing data
to some floppy disk drives, (d) there are different incompatible formats in
which data is placed on the floppy disk, (e) sometimes Windows recognizes
the floppy disk drive as a Read-only device, (f) other software packages are
sometimes required for Windows to recognize the floppy disk drive as a
Writable device, (g) other software packages from other companies sometimes
cause conflicts with Windows, causing failures in one or the other, (h)
other software packages are required though, in order to write data in
formats that Windows cannot, (i) if the floppy disk drive writes data too
fast, then the buffer might go empty, and render the floppy disk unreadable,
and possibly (j) for all i know, PIO mode versus DMA mode might be a factor,
whatever that means.
maybe the number of possible explanations for failure is the same number of
combinations and permutations you can get from the following : (1) CD-RW
hardware, (2) CD-RW firmware, (3) missing updates in Windows, (4) values of
check boxes in Windows such as "Enable Recording", (5) presence/absence of
other software that might conflict with Windows, (6) format chosen for
writing data, (7) presence/absence of buffer underrun protection, (8) speed
chosen to write the data, (9) and so on and so on .....
I am using Windows xp " write files to cd" right click files send to cd,
open
cd-rw drive and click on write these files. The hardware came on the
computer
45 years ago and it is a cd-rom and burner in one. The enable box is
checked.I have 14gb of free space left on hard drive. I have not used it in
a
while but to the best of my memory it worked fine befor downloading sp2, is
this possible?
