DVDs not recognized

[James Kirk]

Greetings all.
I am running XP MCE with latest updates.
I have a BENQ Read/Write DVD drive.
Until last week I was able to succesfully back up data on this drive.
Today, for no reason that I can discern, the drive no longer recognizes
DVDs. I can burn a CD, but not DVDs. When the drive is empty, Explorer
shows it as DVD drive. When I insert a blank DVD, Explorer changes to
indicate it is a CD drive. Checking under Device Manager it is noted as a
DVD drive. I have installed the latest drivers.
I have Nero, and one of it's tools recognizes the blank DVD as DVD, but then
even Nero will not burn a DVD. Depending on the time of day (or so it
seems) I get a message saying 'Drive D: is not accessible', or 'Unable to
perform task' (when attempting to burn a DVD). I have different brands of
blank DVDs and all give the same result.

Any ideas or suggestions gratefully accepted.

Thanks.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

There are two lasers in a DVD optical drive, one for the CD side and one for
the DVD side. Your DVD laser seems to have died. You could try a standard
CD cleaning kit, but with the price of DVD burners today, probably a better
idea to purchase a new drive.

 

[James Kirk]

Thanks for the reply.
I too had decided that replacing would be the quickest/easiest.
But then I remembered I had installed an external SATA hard drive just
before my DVD problems. I unplugged the hard drive but still had DVD
recognition problems. I pulled out the DVD drive and noticed on the back
jumpers for master/slave. I moved it master and now it works even with the
external drive plugged in.
This makes no sense to me. I suspect I must have just jostled something
that corrected it. I have no idea.
Anywho, it's working now.
Thanks for the input.