CD/DVD drive won't recognize disks

I have a Toshiba Satellite A75-S211 which uses a Matshita UJ-820S multi-purpose drive.

Oftentimes (most of the time) it fails to recognize disks when inserted, especially blank disks. As such, I cannot burn CD's or DVD's.

Sometimes, if I reinsert (often multiple times) or reboot, it will recognize the disk, but other times, it won't. On occasion it will only remember the previous disk. (If I am watching a DVD, eject, and insert a data disk, it won't recognize the data disk but will instead think the DVD is still inserted.)

Any suggestions?

I have reinstalled the drivers to no avail.

Thanks.

 

You say that you have re-installed the drivers but have you tried booting to Safe Mode, going to the device manager and deleting the drive from the list. It will then be re-loaded as a device on next boot-up. Then reload the drivers if required.

 

Check to see if there is a FIRMWARE update for your Matshita UJ-820S multi-purpose drive (Matshita support, should have one) or try cleaning your optical drive with a CD/DVD cd disk cleaner...whenever I have disk problems with my drives , I just insert the cleaner disk and 20 seconds later I'm using my drive with no more problems...just the smallest amount of dust can screw-up the laser and make it misread media. Also, if you insert a BLANK disk in your drive, you sometimes must tell the BURNING software which drive to use. Some older BURNING software utilities , use the same drive , as the SOURCE and the TARGET drive or the harddrive as the TARGET. .