DVD Drive reads CD Drive in "My Computer" when Blank Media is put in drive.

Not surprising.  Dell has this "community" so their customers can assist each other because Dell can't be bothered.

And the offshore "Tech support" they hire is useless: invariably they refer one to canned information which misses the issue; or they explain how to do the most basic of tasks -- again without apparent concern for whether it will actually address the actual question or issue.

And they'll doubtless delete this post: image is far more important than offshored "Tech support".which provides, at best, nothing of use, and at worst, head-games and runarounds.

And there's no continuity.  One get's a "response" from one person, one responds to that, then one gets a "response" from a different person.  And never the same one twice.  That's an excellent strategy for driving customers away not only from "Tech support" but also Dell Corporation and its products.

Or even dropping the matter part way through it.

And I've yet to say anything about the modem exchange that was promised -- but which never occurred because Dell personnel didn't keep their end of the agreement.

All in all the machine is good; but the support is insulting, abusive, and useless at best, and at worst, worthless and useless.  Certainly not something anyone in their right mind would throw good money at after the bad of doing business with Dell to begin with.

That's how they keep their prives "low": by outsourcing to the incompetent in order to maximize profits and minimize wages.

Well, we'll see what sort of "entertainment" is imposed this time around . . .

 

YOu are right but I hope this thread doesn't turn into a Vent about Tech Support.
It is lacking in many areas but I do have a real issue with my drive. THank you for your input. I do like it that they have this here so like you said "We can help each other". Well said.

UPdate:
I've tried some more trouble shooting. Changed the jumpers from CSEL to Master/Slave with no change. Tried unistalling the CD and DVD drives in DEvice manager with no change.
I've unistalled every program that has to do with my DVD player with only one change.

AFter I unistalled DVDX Copy the drive letter in My Computer stopped saying DVD-Rom as the media type. It still changed to CD drive and said that the blank media was full though in properties.

The only thing that has worked for being able to put info on the DVD-RW's has been to format them with INCD from Nero. Then I can put data on them in the DVD drive. Otherwise I"m no where closer.

Got an email from Dell and they still don't understand what I'm trying to get across to them. They sent me an email back about my CD drive being broken. Thats not whats going on. They both read well. Play Cd's DVD's I can even copy with DVDX Copy to disk, but blank media does not work in the drive. The strangest thing is the DVD Drive letter changing to CD drive in My Computer. I talked to someone at STaples and they had never heard about something like that in all their years of tech support. Its not really their problem but they took the time to listen and throw a few possible tests I could do at me. Hey they were only 10 miles from my house also.

I'm hoping to resolve this.

Hi L-R,

I may be wasting your time as well, Click on the CD/RW link in my post and scroll to Section 20, article 3. Then run the fix in Section 15 article 13.
Also if you just recently applied SP2, one gentleman said he ran the driver roll back.
I would too suggest Section 12, article 10.

Best RegarDs




God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.

---

CD/RW Link

Thanks Predator,
It didn't solve my problem (I actaully tried part of the fix) but it didn't hurt anything either. I hadn't tried unistalling IDE SEcondary just the drives themselves.

Haven't installed SP2 yet, and really don't want to. I'm not a big windows fan,but I hesitate on setting up a dual boot machine till I get it running right.

Its a strange problem. I think its in Windows somewhere. I just don't know what to tweak. LIke I said the thing happening in My Computer is strange.

Put Blank media in and it changes from DVD/CD to CD Drive.
THen when I pop the blank media out. It changes back to DVD/CD as its listed device.

I"m going to try another forum or two. If anyone knows of any good forums to post this on let me know. I'm heading over to Techguy.org right now.

Thanks for your help.

Hi L-R,

I recall something on the drive changing but I have been digging around and not found it yet. Please do not take this as an insult, you are using the correct media for the drive and do not have two Packet Writing programs installed, example Sonic`s DLA & Nero`s InCD?

Best Regards




God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.

---

CD/RW Link

I'm using the right media but I have InCD installed. I'll uninstall that if you think it will help. I've formated two disks with it and that was the only way to put anything on a disk.

Actually this was happening before I installed the Nero Softare Suite.

Hi L-P,

If InCD is the only one you have, then No I see no reason to uninstall it. Mastering software, such as Roxio, Nero, even Sonic can work fine on the same system, however having two Packet Writing programs together on the same system can cause issues, truthfully at the moment I am grasping at straws. I have been to a couple of MS User groups but still no luck, I do recall something on this but for the life of me cannot remember where, one of my late night browsing trips.

I got an e-mail from a friend, the old Regulars here tend to talk behind the scenes from time to time helping each other out, he suggested it may be time to break down and do a clean install of Windows XP (he knows I rarely like suggesting this .. hate giving up ...lol)
I am still searching...




God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.

---

CD/RW Link

Revolt: Unless I am missing something here, the drive/OS are all operating normally…

If you have a combo writer, DVD/CD and you put blank CD media in it, it becomes a CD drive. What else would you expect it to do?

Likewise if you put blank DVD media in it, it will be a DVD drive…

XP has no ability to write to a DVD. It has the ability to write to a CD as Music or Data w/Sessions.

However, installing Nero's InCD will disable XP writing and it cannot be enabled unless InCD is removed.

If you are going to use a packet writer like InCD, it can only be used with formatted media.

Once you format media you can only use it with a packet writer and it will be rejected by all other burning applications.

Welcome to the world of optical media. Anything you know about files and magnetic media has nothing to do with optical media. It has its' own standards and rules.

Hi L-R,

I am sorry, I was under the impression that the Mastering software was not working but you could use the Packet Writing program. As for the drive changing, if you are in Device Manager, inserting blank media has no effect on the drives, I just tested this with both my Plextor DVD/RW & Sony CD/RW, however, if you are viewing your drives under "My Computer", then they will change and this is normal as Jim stated. I had my mind set on Nero not working and simply not reading your post as I should have.

Best Regards




God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,
the good fortune to run into the ones I do and the eyesight to tell the
difference.

---

CD/RW Link

I"m learning more and more as time goes on. I guess thats just life.
Yes I finally found out thru lots of searching that the change in My Computer was normal. There are still some problems (at least I think they are problems). I've managed to burn to DVD-RW disc with Nero. Finally.
Now I have a disc that is locking up my system when I put it in the drive. In Properties in My Computer a half full DVD-RW is showing as full. Is this normal. I would think the little pie chart would show half full. When I go into explore on this disc I can see the fils, but if I click on one of the files in the folders the computer locks up till I eject the disc then everything is ok again.

Is this all normal. I really want to back up my system but a bunch of discs that I can't access are useless. Still just messing around with it. If worse comes to worse I will try to reinstall windows again or do a repair on the OS if that is possible. I can't help but think there is something wrong with it from this last install that I did. Must have missed something or installed some driver too soon or too late.
I don't know. Thank you both for you advice.

---

@LInuxRevolt wrote:
I"m learning more and more as time goes on. I guess thats just life.
Yes I finally found out thru lots of searching that the change in My Computer was normal. There are still some problems (at least I think they are problems). I've managed to burn to DVD-RW disc with Nero. Finally.
Now I have a disc that is locking up my system when I put it in the drive. In Properties in My Computer a half full DVD-RW is showing as full. Is this normal. I would think the little pie chart would show half full. When I go into explore on this disc I can see the fils, but if I click on one of the files in the folders the computer locks up till I eject the disc then everything is ok again.

Is this all normal. I really want to back up my system but a bunch of discs that I can't access are useless. Still just messing around with it. If worse comes to worse I will try to reinstall windows again or do a repair on the OS if that is possible. I can't help but think there is something wrong with it from this last install that I did. Must have missed something or installed some driver too soon or too late.
I don't know. Thank you both for you advice.

---

There are several ways "Write" a DVD. Precisely how did you write this media?

Keep in mind what I said about optical media having its' own standards… BTW, you will find Linux will be far more limiting when it comes to optical media…

Jim~
As far as my time with Linux goes. I had it on my old computer with 98SE. Copy of Mandrake 9.1 and it was a cool boot setup. I can't even get Windows XP to work right yet so I'm holding off.

Back to the subject.
I burned in Nero using the application "Nero Burning Rom SE". In that I used the DVD-Rom ISO multisession setting. There is also DVD-Rom (UDF) or DVD-Rom (UDF/ISO). I'm not sure if I used the right setting or not.

When the disc is inserted in the drive it reads as "Title of disc" (E:) in my computer. and under the Disc Icon it reads DVD-Rom.

Actually I just tried this again. And I could cut and paste a file off of the DVD.

Could this have something to do with Norton Security Suite. I just unistalled it because it was not letting me access https webpages.???? This is a new development.LOL!!

Thanks for your time on this subject Jim.

A little more experimenting and all the DVD stuff seems to be working well now that Norton is unistalled, but that leaves me kind of unprotected.

In My computer the disks that Ive copied files on still show as full in that Pie Chart in properties. It shows that I've copied 207MB in Used Space but says that its full. Its a 4.7GB DVD+RW disk. The file system reads as CDFS. There is progress being made though. I couldn't do this with it yesterday. I just need to figure out if I can run Norton now also. May have to switch to something else for firewall and anti-virus.

---

@LInuxRevolt wrote:
Jim~
As far as my time with Linux goes. I had it on my old computer with 98SE. Copy of Mandrake 9.1 and it was a cool boot setup. I can't even get Windows XP to work right yet so I'm holding off.

Back to the subject.
I burned in Nero using the application "Nero Burning Rom SE". In that I used the DVD-Rom ISO multisession setting. There is also DVD-Rom (UDF) or DVD-Rom (UDF/ISO). I'm not sure if I used the right setting or not.

When the disc is inserted in the drive it reads as "Title of disc" (E:) in my computer. and under the Disc Icon it reads DVD-Rom.

Actually I just tried this again. And I could cut and paste a file off of the DVD.

Could this have something to do with Norton Security Suite. I just unistalled it because it was not letting me access https webpages.???? This is a new development.LOL!!

Thanks for your time on this subject Jim.

---

I can give you some info on this, but the terminology varies slightly among the software and I don't use Nero.

The ability to add files to media is dependant on how it was written and has nothing to do with the type of media, R or RW, used.

Packet Writing (InCD, DLA, DirectCD/Drag to Disc) requires formatting the media. Once formatted it cannot be used by any other writing software. InCD only works with RW media. The media is always formatted in UDF, however there is an option to keep a parallel formatting in ISO9660.

Your Eject settings control whether you can add to the media. If you Close it, it means just what it implies…

This is one of the areas where terminology can be misleading. Roxio calls it "Close disc to read on any PC". Seems like a good idea but you won't be adding to that disc! Their other option is, "Use disc on this PC only". While that doesn't seem a good choice, that is the one that works!

Authoring (Nero Burning ROM, Creator Classic, Record Now) should offer 3 format choices, UDF, Joliet & ISO9660. Joliet is the best choice and Joliet Standard will be used even for UDF. UDF is second runner up but either one will be seamless as far as we are concerned. (ISO9660 is very limited and only needed for MAC pre-OSX, Unix/Linux)

Two other options will exist, Finalized & Sessions. (Roxio calls Finalizing "Read Only" in their V7. I guess too many people didn't understand what Finalize meant???)

Sessions allow you to add more to the media. However you must import previous Session(s) in order for them to be visible. You can add/overwrite but cannot erase/delete. Note that XP has trouble reading multiple sessions on DVDs. (Fixed in SP2).

Media will only show free space if the media is formatted for packet writing or written with Sessions and is in a writer capable of writing to it! All media placed in a ROM drive is Read Only with Zero bytes of free space.

Well Jim thank you for that. It may take me a few to digest all of this info, but I will do just that. Since I uninstalled Norton things have mellowed out. Ended up going back to a few freeware versions for my Firewall and AntiVirus.

Thanks again for taking the time to share what you know about computers.