DVD burner not burning!

[Burness Speakman]

Its come down to this. The freaking double layer burning 8.5 max capacity burner will not burn a DVD. I have gotten "drive not ready" "needs a NERO plug in" "abort". . . . As soon as I put a CD in it . . . bingo. I got lights. Am I missing some drivers? plug ins?

[THoff]

Take UVS out of the equation by burning an ISO file, and burning that using Nero -- it seems you have that installed on your system.

[GeorgeW]

what kind of DVD you putting in the drive? ±R/RW???

Do you have "InCD" installed? Avoid any "packet writing" software (the kind that lets you drag-and-drop to your DVD Burner like it was a hard drive).

Try different media, or check for firmware updates for your burner.

oh yea, sometimes a reboot helps...

[Burness Speakman]

Thanks guys. I finally broke down and emailed the Manufacturer. I bought this computer at Walmart, only 2 weeks ago. An emachine and come to find out its a Gateway. Emachine says I should reinstall the drivers etc. A rather long and in depth response from them. Here I've been bitching about the programing and everything else when it could be the drive itself.

[GeorgeW]

yea, Gateway bought EMachines at the end of January -- instant retail shelving for Gateway.

Checking for firwmware updates from the manufacturer can help resolve issues (not just with DVD Burners, but in general).

[Burness Speakman]

I checked the firmware. My DVD burner model is a TS-H552B which is Samsung, but the Firmware states GA02. Both Gateway and Samsung have updated their firmware and I am confused as to which to download. Samsung has a "warning" on their site. My heart is saying get the Samsung, my brain is saying oooohhh no, don't do that.

[ugadog]

Burness, go with your heart, man ... and the Samsung driver ... that is what I did. My belief is that Gateway takes the TSnn drivers from Samsung and renames them to GAnn to post on their website. I don't know why Gateway is lagging so far behind with the drivers, except maybe they have to spend time and money to test them in all the Gateway machines before they can give their "official stamp of approval" and put it on their website. But if you go with the Gateway driver, you are certainly getting an older version, compared to the latest and greatest with Samsung. Yes, there is a warning from Samsung. Yes, it may invalidate your warranty from Gateway if your drive fails and they find out you are not using a Gateway approved driver. But, I figured I would go with the Samsung and then back out to Gateway if I ran into problems. That was 5 weeks ago and my burner has been working wonderfully since then using the Samsung driver. I installed the TS09 driver, but I see they now have a TS10 available. I won't upgrade the driver again unless I run into other problems.

Just FYI, that particular burner was apparently one of the first 16X models on the market. I saw a lot of speculation on other sites that they went to market too soon, with early drivers that were under-tested and had major compatibility issues. The later drivers from Samsung appear to have resolved most of those issues. Here are a few links if you are interested:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/163/1
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=31790

[Burness Speakman]

Thanks for the input ugadog

B

[Burness Speakman]

I upgraded my GA02 to TS10. The burner finally worked. Burnt my first DVD in Ulead, , , But not a second one. Now I am getting a message that the disc is not empty and I should put a new one in and retry! Huh?

Now what?