DVD RW Drive not recognized as recordable let alone a DVD drive

[Guest]

Sony DVD RW DW-U14A drive, plugged in, Windos has
recognized it as merely a CD ROM drive and will not see
it as the drive it is. The help on the M$ site did not
help (changing the registry did nothing) and it wont read
CD ROMs.

any help?

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Try this:

Click Start-Run-Type devmgmt.msc and click ok. Now expand DVD\CD Drives
and right click on your Sony Drive. Now click uninstall or remove and
it will remove it from your hardware. Now reboot and let Windows
reinstall the drivers. It may have just loaded the wrong drivers.

Also, you may want to try the latest firmware available here:
http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?download_id=1618

But what I would do is this:
This DVD Drive is actually the OEM version of the Sony DRU-510. Use this
here to turn it into the DRU-510:
http://isweb44.infoseek.co.jp/computer/type-ive/files/14A_to_510A [1.0c].zip

Once you've done that here's the sony frimware upgrade site which will
have much better support in Windows and from Sony

http://sony.storagesupport.com/legalagreement.zulu?dlid=dvdrw/downloads/Firmware10d/510A_10d.zip

Nathan McNulty