[Lsims07]

I have a regular Compaq desktop computer
running on windows XP
about 2 years old

Within about the last 2 months it has had some problems with the disk drive
At first it wouldn't recognize blank/rewritten CD's
Then it stopped recognizing any form of CD
Then it stopped recognizing rewritten DVD's
But normal DVD's work just fine!

The CD or DVD doesn't even show up in 'my computer'
it's like I haven't inserted anything at all!

help me out, it's driving me crazy

However, recently the Windows service pack 3 disaster hit my computer and it totally wiped my computer clean of everything. It was not long after that that it stopped accepting blank/rewritten CD's, but it was okay with regular CD's and rewritten DVD's until about 3 weeks ago

I have had no major software changes to my knowledge

HELP ME!

[BG-0]

With internal DVD-writers costing something like up to 30 $ for a quality unit, you could try another drive.

[dustyjay]

Try uninstalling the optical (CD/DVD) drives in device manager. Close device manager and reboot the computer. For some reason this works frequently, unless there is actually a problem with the drive itself.

[Lsims07]

dustyjay I tried your technique
it didn't work
still the same problems as before

but why would it be a problem with the drive if regular DVD's still work fine?

[BG-0]

Search the forum with: filter remove dvd or something like that to get instructions on optical drive "filter" removal. That could help with your problem. My search doesn't work for some reason, keep getting fatal errors because of 134 MB max memory use getting exhausted by 79 bytes of use. o.O