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