CDR recognition

I have been burning CDRs on computer for two years (using Easy CD Creator 4.02). A week ago my computer decided to stop recognising ALL my CDRs, prompted by "no CD in drive" (this includes a few CDs that were not burnt by me). I have tried uninstalling Easy CD Creator then reinstalling it. Then even went to the extreme of reformatting my hard drive. Still no luck!

But the drive WILL accept commercial/mass produced CDs.

I have not installed any new programs recently to cause a conflict, the only thing I can think of is the updates from PC Cillin (anti-virus software).

Can anyone help me ... pleeeeeeeaaaaaassssseeeeee!

Am running Windows ME ... if that helps, at all.

 

Have you tried to clean the lens of the CD drive? At times, some dust on laser lense gives some funny uncomprehensible errors.

 

Welcome to TSG.

I am presuming you did not format any of those CDs before recording. If you did not format the CDs then the software has nothing to do with reading the CD. It should read fine in any drive regardless of whether any burning software is installed.

If you have both a CD-ROM and burner and the CDs will not read in either where they would before I am perplexed as that should not be happening. If you are using the burner as your only optical device I would suspect the laser/reader has weakened or gotten dirty. It is possible that it is marginal so that it can read a factory CD and not a burned one. If you have some canned air you could try blowing it the laser assembly – not too close or you could misalign it. The cleaning CDs from the record stores can work as well if you have one.

Factory CDs are easier to read than CDR for a marginal drive, and RW is much harder to read than CDR – 15% reflectivity compared to 60%.

Confirm you didn’t format the CDs before you wrote them.

 

Of course, if the lens is dirty, it could be burning coasters too, which sounds like what's happening here. Did you try your burned CD's in another system?