old Cd drive not reading new cd-rs - can owt be done?

[hart.plummer]

I've been slightly souping up an old Packard Bell to sell for my
brother, but I find the CD-rom drive, which is the writeable kind,
won't read the 52 speed cd-rs I put in it. It has a generic driver,
doI need to update it or will it not work with current cd-r's anyway?
Do people still make CD's for the older drives? Have I got this all
arse-about-face? I put a CD in and it will play music, but a blank CD-
r when I put it in just whirs around and the green light doesn'tgo
off. If I try to write to it I'm told there's no CD in the drive and
I'm prompted to retry.

Is it possible to get flashplayer dowloaded onto a memory stick ot
install manually - there doesn't usually seem ot be this option but I
need to update it on the Packard Bell which I'm currently unable to
get near a phoneline etc.

Thanks for all input.

 

[Mistoffolees]

I've been slightly souping up an old Packard Bell to sell for my
brother, but I find the CD-rom drive, which is the writeable kind,
won't read the 52 speed cd-rs I put in it. It has a generic driver,
doI need to update it or will it not work with current cd-r's anyway?
Do people still make CD's for the older drives? Have I got this all
arse-about-face? I put a CD in and it will play music, but a blank CD-
r when I put it in just whirs around and the green light doesn'tgo
off. If I try to write to it I'm told there's no CD in the drive and
I'm prompted to retry.

Is it possible to get flashplayer dowloaded onto a memory stick ot
install manually - there doesn't usually seem ot be this option but I
need to update it on the Packard Bell which I'm currently unable to
get near a phoneline etc.

Thanks for all input.

CD-R blank discs are supposed to be backwards compatible since it is
the recording speed that is important. Try burning at a slower speed,
such as 8X, 16X, etc., instead of 52X. Should this technique fail, then
replace the CDROM drive...they're relatively inexpensive.

And, yes, flashdrives, jumpdrives, etc., are suitable substitutes for
CD-RW discs.