Drive doesn't recognise blank cd's

Hi, hope someone can help me.

I have a Dell Dimension 5150 that used to burn to blank CD's fine but for some reason has decided to stop.

The drive won't recognise blank cd's at all. Any suggestions on what i can do to resolve this?

Please bear in mind that whilst I'm not completely computer illiterate I'll probably need this explained in a fairly basic way

Thanks

 

monkeyem

Thank you for the post! I take it you have a HL-DT-ST DVD +-RW GWA4164B drive that is the issue? If so, the GWA-4164B is a problematic drive. This model is a custom one for OEM customers and is usually only bundled by OEMs like Dell with their computers. It isn't usually sold as a bare drive on the market. It's not typical of the quality of LG drives in general. Unfortunately, it might be the only encounter with LG drives most Dell and other OEM computer owners ever encounter. Have you tried updating the drivers?

 

Thanks for the reply.

I tried to update the drivers followings the instructions on Dell's support website but got thoroughly confused

Was hoping someone here would be able to explain things a bit better for me.

 

Can you boot from a bootable cd when you start your computer?

 

CD writers don't need drivers to function. Windows takes care of that.

What happens when you put in a blank CD?
What program are you using to burn the CDs? (Windows? What version? Nero? Roxio? Windows Media Player?)
Does it read any CDs?
Sometimes the drives just fail.

 

You got a point there. How about we just microwave the device instead

 

Sometimes the brand (or even just certain batches of the brand) of media is incompatible with the drive . You could try updating the firmware (as an OEM device , you would do this via Dell , not LG) . Same Q's as DoubleHelix and two others . Does this happen with different brands ? Can the drive read discs it has previously burned ?