Can play CD's & DVD's, and burn CD's, but not DVD-RW&#

[SmokingMan]

I have a Lite-On DVD burner. It will play CD's and DVD's with no problem, and will also burn CD's. I tried to burn a DVD-RW and it won't work. When I look at the properties from XP, it shows up as 0 MB available & 0 MB capacity. I can't format it through Windows or Nero. In fact, I can't eject the blank disc. I have to shut down my system and manually remove the disc. These problems have only happened with a blank DVD-RW I was planning to use for backup. It was a brand new disc. I've e-mailed Lite-On support, but have yet to get any indication they even received my e-mail.

Any ideas?

[-pops-]

Can you tell us the model number, please?

It isn't by chance described as a "Combo Drive" is it?

The reason I ask that is because a Combo Drive will read AND write CDs but will only read/play DVDs. Many people have been caught out by this marketing ploy.

[SmokingMan]

It's a Lite-On SOHW-1693S06C 16X DVD+/-R DVD+/-RW DVD+/-R DL. It should record both CD's and DVD's, single or dual layer. Windows asks me what I want to do when the disc is inserted, but after that, there's nothing. The strange part is that I cannot eject the blank DVD, I have to shut down my computer and use a wire to manually eject it. If I try to manually eject it with the system on, the tray closes back up before I can get it completely open. It has worked great up until now. The reason I bought this was to burn my home camcorder movies and for higher capacity backup than I get with CD's.

[-pops-]

XP does not have DVD burning software included. Which version of Nero do you have? Early versions may not recognise the model of writer you have.

You should be able to eject the disk from My Computer by RIGHT clicking on the drive in the list and then click eject. Does this work to remove the disk?

Why are you trying to format the disk? I have burned thousands of both DVDs and CDs and never formatted any of then. The only reason I can imagine for formatting is for packet writing where the disk is supposed to be used like a large floppy - forget it. The software for doing this, such as InCD, I consider akin to a creation of the devil and is the direct cause of lots of problems associated with work on optical disks.

[SmokingMan]

I have Nero 5.5.10.56 and Nerovision Express 2. I guess I assumed I could just write data to a DVD with either one of these programs. Nerovision Express only has various options all reated to burning video CD's or DVD's. Is there special software I have to use in order to use the DVD burner for data backups? Nerovision Express and Cyberlink Power DVD came bundled with the burner.

Also, I have tried right clicking on the drive to eject the disc, and no, it doesn't work. Nothing works except shutting down the system and manually ejecting the disc. But only with a blank DVD-RW, any other disc ejects with no problem.

[SmokingMan]

After some more exploring I discovered a dropdown selection in Nero that allows me to do what I want. I don't know how I missed it to begin with...but I did, must be Mad Cow. Now everything seems to be working as I wanted, except for the Win XP backup utility. I had hoped it would work with the DVD burner, so I could set up backup jobs.

Thanks for your help and your patience.

[Scarecrow Man]

New versions of Nero have two tabs. One for CD, one for DVD. You must select the DVD tab in order to burn a DVD disc.

A freeware app, CDBurnerXP Pro, will burn both with no worries.

[-pops-]

I believe that Win XP backup doesn't write to optical media. You need an independent backup facility to do that.

Acronis is a popular backup which I and a lot of others here use. It's easy to set up and to recover information from.

(BTW, the DVD buring facilities of Nero 5 are somewhat limited. Best go for a more recent version.)