Computer issues and suggestions from those who better know what they're doing

[Verfremdungseffekt]

I'll try to be as clear as possible, and see if any of the nerds around here can point me in the right direction.

My DVD-R drive is maybe three years old, now. About six months ago it developed a curious condition:

* It reads standard CDs and DVDs just fine
* It reads older burned CDs and DVDs just fine
* It writes new CDs and DVDs just fine
* It generally won't read newly-burned DVDs. Unsure about CDs.

Again, this isn't a problem with reading burned discs in general; it's just discs that I've burned since it decided it wasn't going to read newly burned discs anymore. It's not the media at fault; I've tried a couple of brands. It doesn't seem to be the software, as I've tried a few programs, and the results are the same.

It's not that the newly burned discs seem to have any obvious problem, either. Though I don't have another PC to hand, they work perfectly well in my Xbox or DVD player.

It seems like, for whatever reason, the drive just doesn't want to recognize things it has recently burnt. This makes very little sense to me, so I'm wondering if maybe there's a curious option that I'm not aware of -- perhaps it's burning in a different format than it's primed to recognize and try to read?

I will note again that I haven't yet tried them in another actual PC -- so maybe the discs are lacking some kind of checksum that my other devices (Xbox, DVD player) don't care about, but that will confuse the life out of XP.

Any obvious ideas come to mind?

 

[Verfremdungseffekt]

Oh, yeah. I believe I tried reinstalling my drivers -- though this was long enough ago that I may just be making this up. So. Provisionally cross that out, too.

 

[ygolo]

Have you tried newly burned DVDs from a different DVD writer in yours?
Have you tried playing the newly burned DVDs with other DVD players?

If you've only tested with DVDs written by your drive, it may not me writing fine.

 

[INTJ123]

honestly dvd drives are cheap, look on newegg.com, probably like 25 bucks. Because I had a crazier problem with my comp because of my dvd drive. My comp would keep restarting on it's own every 5 seconds and I didn't figure it out till the very end that it was the dvd drive because it seemed fine and would still work.

You only have a minor problem though it only can't read the recently burned dvds right?

 

[mthomps]

Try what ygolo said. If there's a problem with that or you've gotten tired of worrying about it, do what INTJ123 said and just buy a new 20 somethin' dollar dvd-rw drive.