DVD burner problem

[mdhakk]

I'm having a strange problem with my DVD burner. It all started when I was attempting to burn a CD with some crappy discs (don't know if that's an issue) and the drive started spinning at odd intervals. The progress on the burn stopped completely and any attempt I made to abort the burn failed. I tried shutting down the program, opening the drive, nothing worked. I finally decided to shut down and see if that helped, and sure enough I was able to get everything working again.

The only problem is now my drive is acting incredibly strange. Every burn seems to be completely random as to whether or not it will succeed, discs seem to be skipping in and out of being readable (when trying to install new software off a disc it will fail randomly and I have to run the install multiple times to get it to finish), and CD audio won't play.

I've tried disabling and enabling the drive and I've removed all of my virtual drives. Does anyone have anything they can suggest short of replacing it? I don't even want to know how much it would cost me to replace a DVD burner for my laptop.

Thanks.

 

[Apokalipse]

you can try a CD drive cleaning kit, or even different CD's

 

[mdhakk]

I've tried all kinds of CDs to no avail, but I will go out and buy a cleaning kit to see if that works. I can't see how it would help seeing as what caused the problem, but it obviously can't hurt.

Thanks.

 

[smurph]

Any results??
I had very similar intermittent problems with my CDRW drive in my old PC a while back (the drive is now unused in my new PC).
I am now experiencing the same with a Philips DVDRW drive, which I have tried cleaning, upgraded firmware successfully, uninstalled and reinstalled software (Nero), all without success.

Must note that CDs burn successfully, but DVDs do not?!?

It is now and costing me time and money trying to resolve, especially ruining new dvds which keep failing!!

I assume it is then end of the life of the drive, and it burnt less 100 CD/DVDs!! Do I return to the vendor and get a replacement?

Could it be the media, using a 50 pack of Logik DVD+R, and problem arose after using about 35 of them successfully.

 

[mdhakk]

No results, it's choosing randomly what will work on any given day. It is reading audio CDs now, but discs with data on them are reading for random times before they fail. Can't burn CDs or DVDs.

My problem arose after attempting a burn with a cheap CD-R, to me it seemed like the disc itself caused a burn to fail and caused the drive to malfunction. It's hard for me to believe a disc is capable of ruining a drive, but it's a relativly new drive, (less then a year old and not many burns in that time), and this is the second time this has happened to me.

 

[icemakr]

If it's still under warranty you otta send it back and tell 'em what a piece of 5hit it is.

 

[mdhakk]

I'm pretty sure that it isn't because it came as part of my laptop. If I remember right it had a 30 day warranty and a year of phone service. I got it slightly less then one year ago.