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My LITE-ON LDW-411S DVD+/-R recorder is having problems recognising recordable DVD disks. Whenever I load a blank DVD-R or DVD+R into the drive (regardless of the media’s brand) the label for the DVD drive in ‘My Computer’ changes from ‘DVD-RW Drive’ to ‘CD Drive’ and reports that there is 0 bytes data. Then, when attempting to copy data onto the DVD a message appears that the disk is full. The same error occurs regardless of which burning software is used (e.g., Windows Explorer, Alcohol 120%, Nero, and CloneCD). The drive can play DVDs and CDs correctly. The computer is a PIII 733 MHz with 256 MB RAM running Windows XP.

When attempting to open a CD, which has been inserted while Windows is running, the following message appears: ‘Windows cannot read from this disk. The disk might be corrupted or may be using a format that is not compatible with Windows’. However, if the computer is started with a CD already in the drive, I can open the CD with no problems. The computer has the latest CD/DVD drivers. Reformatting and reinstalling Windows works for a while, but then the problem returns. The computer is running Windows XP Professional.

Whenever a disk is loaded into my DVD drive, the disk is automatically ejected for no known reason. Windows does not seem to detect the problem. Can you help? The computer is a Celeron 433 MHz running Windows XP.

More often than not my computer freezes within a few minutes of loading Windows. No error message is displayed, and no blue-screen. I assume the problem is with my burner (BenQ CRW2410A), as the lights often flash, the burner begins burning a CD that doesn’t exist, and the drive opens and closes without warning (sometimes getting stuck halfway). When this begins, the computer dies. However, sometimes after restarting the computer everything runs perfectly, but in these cases the burner is not visible in My Computer nor in the System Device list. I have already reinstalled Windows and tried reloading the CD/RW drivers but this does not fix the problem. Help please! The computer is a P4 1.7 GHz computer running Windows 98.

Recently I upgraded to Windows 2000 from Windows Me. Since upgrading, Nero Burning ROM will only allow me to write CDs of 40X speed with my Ricoh CD writer. Before upgrading I was writing CDs of 12X speed. I also have a 16x DVD drive which now doesn’t read 40X CD. Please advise.