Win XP will not recognize DVD-RW burner

Question

Dear Forum,    I have a Dimension 8200 Desktop.  It came with a DVD-ROM drive and a CD-RW drive.  Recently, I purchased an I/OMagic (DVD+-RW/+-R) IDE 16X DVD-RW drive from Dell, and swapped out the CD-RW drive.  I now have the DVD-RW drive in the Primary (Master) position on the IDE secondary drive channel, and I put the old DVD-ROM drive in the Secondary (Slave) position on the IDE secondary drive channel.  The 80 GB hard drive is on the primary IDE drive channel, in the Primary position (if I have my terminology right) -- location 0:0 in drive properties.  I have used the Nero InfoTool program and it reports that my DVD-RW is apparently set up properly (location 1:0), recognizing all the characteristics that you would expect, including the latest firmware update that I downloaded to the drive; the DVD-ROM drive is reported to be at location 1:1, which is true.  InfoTool also recognizes the DVD-R blank disk I have inserted into the drive (capacity 4.38 GB).  However, my Win XP system does not recognize the drive as a DVD-RW drive, calling it CD Drive (D: ), and also does not see the blank DVD-R disk which is inserted, or sees it as described below (0 used, 0 free, 0 capacity).  When I click on Properties for the Drive, Windows says it is a CD Drive, but that the disk is a DVD-R with 0 used, 0 free, and 0 capacity.  When I go to the Hardware Properties tab of the drive, CD Drive (D: ) Properties, it says   Name: DVDRW IDE 16x, Type: DVD/CD-ROM drives, Manufacturer: Standard CD-ROM drives, Location: Location 0(0), Device Status: This device is working properly.   This is a little strange because the location for the old DVD-ROM drive is 1(1); why isn't the new drive location 1(0)?  The location for the 80 GB hard disk is given as 0(0), which makes sense.  It's almost like the system thinks that the new drive is the same type as the old DVD-ROM drive, which is now in the other position.  The new drive actually will also play DVDs perfectly well, just like the old DVD-ROM drive (which is now in location E: ).       I can use Win XP to read and write from the drive, as though it were a CD-RW drive.  The Nero burning software can use it similarly, but if I try to write data to the DVD-R disk with Nero, it ejects the disk, saying I don't have the correct media ('Disc required for the compilation:  CD-R/RW').  Apparently my system believes that the DVD-RW drive is a CD-RW drive and it possibly is confused as to the location of the drive on the IDE channels.  The driver files seem to be up-to-date (Windows Service Pack 2) + the Nero software, but I really am ignorant about what should be the correct attributes of the driver files for a DVD-RW.    I also tried uninstalling the Nero packet-writing program InCD 4, which writes to rewritable DVD discs, hoping that that would change things, but it didn't.   I would appreciated any help anyone can give me.  One of the Dell techs said I might swap in a new DVD burner to see if that would work, or if that didn't work, I might have to reformat my hard drive and reinstall Windows.  I hope there is an easier way.    Thanks.    David Silverman

Predator · Answer

Hi David,I just want to double check something OK, Dell ships their systems using the Cable Select jumper Feature. You set the small plastic jumper over the two pins labeled CS or CSEL for both drives and location on the IDE cable determines Master / Slave: exactly what jumper setting do you currently have for both drives?If they are set correctly, either Cable Select for both or Master for the DVD/RW and Slave for the DVD-ROM, then lets try Clearing the NVRAM.Click on the CD/RW link in my post and scroll to Section 11, article 2. If this does not help, same CD/RW link, Section 11, article 1.You may also want to verify that the Secondary IDE channel in the BIOS is set to Auto and that both Drive 0 and Drive 1 is on as well.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

deardavid · Answer

Thanks, Jeff!  My jumpers are both set to Cable Select.  I will now try your other suggestions...    David

deardavid · Answer

Dear Jeff,

I tried your suggestions, but nothing has changed. I cleared NVRAM twice because after I pressed ESC the system rebooted without waiting for me to press ENTER. The first time I cleared it, there were several beeps of confirmation, but the second time there was only one beep. My system never waited for ENTER to restart from the Setup screen after I pressed ESC.
When clearing NVRAM didn't work, I went to the Setup screen again and noticed that both DVD devices were listed as CD-ROM devices (CD-ROM Reader) and both were set to Auto (the alternate setting being Off). When I restored the system defaults, I had to set both DVD drives to a setting called DETECT (and curiously the 2nd drive, the actual DVD-ROM drive had been set to Off by restoring the defaults). Then I rebooted, and as the system came up, it said 'Performing automatic IDE configuration', and it configured it to exactly what I had before...

Thanks again for your suggestions -- I know there's an answer to this somewhere...! Time will give the answer.

David

deardavid · Answer

Dear Jeff,

Even though the Properties of the drives still do not look right ("DVD/CD-ROM drives"), I found I was able to burn a small test file onto the DVD-R disk, using the Nero burning software, and it showed that the disk had a 4 GB capacity. I don't know exactly what corrected the problem, but it looks like one of your suggestions must have worked -- so Thank You!!

However, I was not able to burn a second file onto the disk, and I think the disk is now unusable for writing anymore data to (even though I followed the Nero instructions for writing a 'multi-session'). It may be because of an error writing the second file, because that file was unfortunately in use by another program that I didn't realize was using it, and that may have ruined the data format on the disk for any succeeding files.

I may not be out of the woods yet, but at least the Nero software is recognizing the DVD-R disk enough to write to it (at least once!). I'll try experimenting some more tomorrow.

Thanks again.

David

osprey4 · Answer

David:   As long as you're experimenting with the drive, using DVD-Rs is a bit expensive. Try using DVD-RW or CD-RW discs.   Depending on how you wrote the file using Nero, you may not be able to add more files. You must select the option to do multi-session burning. Another option is to use the Windows CD burning wizard. Open Windows Explorer, select the file(s) you want to write to the disc, right click the selected files, hover over Send to, then select CD-RW (or DVD-RW) drive. Windows will copy the files to a temporary location and a little bubble will pop up telling you there are files waiting to be written to the CD. Click that and a box will pop up showing files on the disc and files waiting to be written to the disc. Click File, Write these files to CD. The only drawback is that it does not support DVD burning.

Predator · Answer

Hi David,Excellent advice as usual from John.As for the Properties, I am some what confused, in Device Manager, the drives will be listed as DVD/CD-ROM with the '+' collasped but once you expand it, Windows should list the names of the drives.If not, then you may have to re-load the IDE channel, Section 20, article of the CD/RW site. Also I have little over 100 Microsoft articles dealings with Windows XP issues listed in Section 100 of the CD/RW, you may wish to browse it as well.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 thedifference. CD/RW Link

deardavid · Answer

Dear Jeff and John and other Forum members,    I've been busy this week and couldn't reply right away, but I did take screen shots of the various properties of the drives on different levels, from Windows, Nero InfoTool, and DVDInfo Pro; and there is also a complete list of drivers from Nero InfoTool.  If you click here, you can see all this information on my web site.  I'm still puzzled why Windows thinks my DVD-RW drive is in IDE location 0 (0) instead of 1 (0), even though Nero InfoTool and DVDInfo Pro seem to know where it is.  I've been so busy collecting this information that I haven't actually experimented much anymore.  I am installing updated versions of the Nero burning software, and I also have purchased some blank DVD+RW disks (as John suggested).  So I'll be diving into it in the next few days -- hope I don't get burned (but I hope the disks do!).  I'll report the results when I get them.  Appreciate all the help I'm getting through this Forum.    David

Predator · Answer

Hi David,So I am to assume that re-loading the secondary IDE channel did not help as well.I am curious, so do keep us informed.If it was mine, I would play around with the jumper setting, maybe go with the old Master / Slave, uninstall the second drive and test the I/O on the End connection as Master, but of course I like to tinker...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

deardavid · Answer

Dear Jeff and other Forum members,

   My apologies for not being able to reply sooner, but again I've been very busy with other projects. I've been preparing a more detailed account of what happened, but I thought I'd better reply now, because it will take me still more time to get that ready and post it.
   In brief: I actually was able to get the DVD-burner to work by changing an entry in a drop-down box in the initial screen of the Nero 6.6 burning software, which somehow I hadn't noticed before. One of the entries was for "D: DVDRW   IDE 16X   [CD-R/RW]" and then there was another, which I had missed, for "D: DVDRW   IDE 16X   [DVD]". The second one worked, and I was able to burn a DVD appropriately. I hadn't realized that Nero could look at a DVDRW two ways, one as a CD burner and the other as a DVD burner; that's why it originally couldn't deal with a regular DVD disk, because it was looking for a CD-R or CD-RW disk.
   I hope to have a more detailed report of what happened later, in case it might be of value to others, and then there are still some problems with the process, which I will try to report on. As it turned out, I didn't have to monkey with the channel hardware to get this to work.

Thanks to all who have helped me, and best regards,

David

osprey4 · Answer

David: Thanks for following up with us. We're here if you have other questions.

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