DVD drive not working

I can write / run programs from CDs just fine, but whenever I put a DVD-R in the drive the light flashes a few times, but the computer recognizes the drive as empty. Problem with drivers or the laser? Help me please!

Model: 16x DVD R/RW CD-RW combo drive

 

If its a blank Dvd-R then thats normal, you can still burn to it even if the system tells you theres no dvd in the drive. Its blank after all. If it has data on it and is not recognized, especially a store bought disk then thats another problem.

There are a few things you can try. I had one drive that I had to install the same firmware on it 3 times before I stopped using Roxio. Somehow Roxio was really messing with the drive. How it got to the firmware I have no Idea but once I uninstalled Roxio and did the firmware one more time it was OK. The simplest thing to try is the old uninstall from Device Manager trick. What can happen is the Generic drivers windows uses for all rom drives can somehow get corrupt and uninstalling the device and then rebooting the PC wil often straighten things out.

The cd and dvd parts of the drive use different lasers, and its usually the case that one will go before the other, but using a lens cleaning disk to dislodge any thing that might be blocking the lens sometimes works.

I must have 5 drives, some of them not more than a few years old that will not read one or the other disks. Since China started making these drives, things have really gone down hill. Even Plextor and Pioneer, once the greatest drives you could get, are now junk like the rest.

 

I must agree (re: the China comment). I have only dealt with 2 Plextor drives and maybe 7 Pioneer drives in the past year or two. Both Plextors failed in under 4 months and required warranty replacement which was a nightmare and took almost 2 months for the replacement to arrive in each case. Of the 7 Pioneer drives, 3 failed in the first month, and 2 more by the 8th month. However, warranty replacement on these was much less of a fiasco. I currently run NEC/OptiArc in my home PC and have never had any issues. It's only about 2 years old; I burn probably 15 discs per week and the only problems I have are from either bad source files, or faulty burning parameters, or trying to burn things too fast that should be burned slow (like movies and music)....

(yeah, I know this has nothing to do with the topic, but I had to say something )

 

Both. It can't recognize either written or unwritten DVDs

 

Go ahead and try my recommended actions, starting with the cleaning by blowing out the drive with a can of compresses air and then running a lens cleaning disk. Then check your jumpers and drive positions to make sure they're correct (Mastered devices at the terminating end of the IDE ribbon and slaved jumpered devices in the middle). Afterwords try to uninstall the drive from Device Manager and restart the PC to let Windows recognize the drive and also clean your registry with ccleaner to remove any old driver references and old data links. If all else fails go to your drive manufacturers website and download firmware for your exact model (everest home edition can help you there) and flash your firmware, but only as a last resort. And If I were you before I did it I would post your model number and the firmware you found so we can verify before you flash.