DVD drive not recognised

[peterpink]

I am trying to create a DVD disc, via 'share' using VS Pro X4.

The upper section of the burn page has the 'drive' drop down blanked out and not possible to select at all, and the message in red 'empty' beside the words 'disc type. Yet I can burn to the disc with Nero - and play it back on the DVD player. Have I missed something - this has never happened before.

Peter

[BrianCee]

The word Nero in your question points to the possible solution to your problem. Programmes such as Nero and Roxio take over control of your DVD drive and do not let other products use it.

First have a look in Task Manager and particularly the 'processes' tab and see whether any components of Nero are running in the background -if they are stop them. You may have to un-install Nero to allow VideoStudio to use the drive.

As a work around perhaps you could use VideoStudio to do all your authoring and then create an .iso file instead of burning to disc - then open Nero and use that to burn the .iso file to DVD.

[peterpink]

Thanks - this is the first time I have opened Nero for about 18 months, so it cannot be blamed. I only used it BECAUSE VS"Pro" won't do the job.

So yes, I am indeed creating a video file which I then load up into Nero - but this is of course unsatisfactory. Great shame that VS has gone into partial self destruct mode again.

[Ken Berry]

Great shame that VS has gone into partial self destruct mode again.

It's rather an exaggeration to say VS is 'self destructing' if there is something else on your computer causing it not to see the drive, especially if it could see it before... When this sort of thing happens to other users -- and it rarely does -- it is usually found that it is some third party program which, as Brian suggests, has taken control of the drive. I know that you say you haven't used Nero for a long time, but it is specifically the Nero InCD sub-program which causes this effect if installed. InCD has a separate entry to Nero in Control Panel > Programs and Features. If there is such an entry, then you need to remove the program.

Failing that, have you recently installed any new programs which need access to the burner drive?

[peterpink]

Well, thanks again. Nero has been sitting on my PC for about 4 years, and InCD does not exist as a programme - nothing but an icon.
VSPro4 had been OK since I bought it in March 2011.

I cannot think of any software that is burner linked in any way. Do you think I might try uninstalling and reinstalling to see whether that fixes it?

[Ken Berry]

If the problem only started recently, you might also consider doing a System Restore in Windows to a point before the problem occurred. A restore will not, of course, affect any videos, documents or other items you have created with VS or other programs. It only affects the programs themselves, deleting any installed after the Restore point.

If you do a reinstall, I think it would be wise the tick the box in the uninstall routing where it asks whether you want to uninstall your personal settings.