I have TWO DVD/CD drives on my PC running XP home. Both used to be able to use both R and RW formats, and I used RWs for backups, incrementally adding data and simply dragging and dropping files in Windows Explorer after the initial formatting.
Suddenly neither drive would recognise NEW RW disks (CDs and DVDs alike) at all, and I was precluded from formatting them either - that option had totally disappeared from the menu.
Also, I could read from some of the disks - not all - and when I checked Properties of those it said the disk was full, and could not be written to. It was acting like a burned R disk.
I tested the CDs on my old PC, and they are fine in every respect, but the drive on that machine does not deal with DVDs, and I need to get at those. I took a DVD RW to a friends PC and it was fine to.
This means there is nothing wrong with the disks
I bought a new drive and installed it - replacing the oldest one - since it was not too expensive and seemed one way to check it out. Sadly that behaves in the same way. I installed that drive on a friends PC and it works fine - just not on my PC, which shows that the drive is not a problem.
I can still burn CD Rs and DVD Rs with complete success on both drives, BUT I CANNOT RESCUE DATA FROM MY BACKUP DVD RWs.
It has been suggested that a Windows update - probably done automatically in October/November - has corrupted something and that I need to go back to the factory settings.
I guess I could - but that is going to take weeks to get back to where I am, and means reloading all the software I have, and re-installing my printers and scanners etc etc. and what a chore.
People say that I could leave it and just use CDs and DVDs that are R only.
Sure I could, but that is a bit of a cop out. I really think something got screwed up in the Software since the PC itself does act very strangely at times - very slow indeed. I have a full, paid for, security package with Firewall, and that seems OK, and I check out and clean up the machine on a weekly basis (I need to since I design and maintain websites and do not want to lose anything).
Any clues?? As I say, CD and DVD RWs work fine on other PCs, but the old drives and the new one will not recognise new RW disks, or allow me to write back to RWs and will only read some of the disks apparently as Rs.
I have been using PC's since the early 1980's, but am not experienced in tinkering with the registry, or the operating software.
