cd-rw not writing

I got caught up tring to help a friend out with his 8200. He started having problems with the OEM cd-rw using Easy-cd creator. Before calling me he went ahead and tried a new Sony drive with no luck. It has been a while since I used ez-cd so I had him try to access the drive via the "send to" method. The drive doesn't show up as an option on the list. When checking the properties under mycomputer, there is no reording tab either.

 

I was able to stop by and verify the above. I also tried the following at seperate times:

 

remove the drive from devman and let windows install it again.

 

removed dvd rom and set cd-rw to master on 2nd ide channel.

 

added the oem cd-rw drive to primary ide as a slave to hd.

 

Lastly, unchecked ezcd from startup menu to check for conflicts with xp's burning s/ware.

 

I resolved to pull the new drive out and put everything back as was. xp returned everything back to normal with the old nec drive but still no option to burn.

 

I understand there's a diagnostic tool to check the drive but ran out of time and patience this evening. Plus my logic say's it's something upstream. Would the diag. software reveal this as well?

 

Thanks  for any insights to this strange one.

 

-Russ