Hello everyone, I've got a Phillips DVD-RW-D28 drive in a Dell Dimension 4400 that is showing just as a CD-ROM drive, and I can't even flash the drive's firmware...whenever I try (using the latest firmware I could find for that drive, 1.68), I get a message saying "Cannot change drive to up mode". I've tried this multiple times, along with uninstalling the default driver, thinking that I would just let XP find the drive again and go from there...but no go. It just keeps coming back on each restart, showing as CD-ROM. This is obviously the first time I've ever seen this...any ideas? As usual, thanks for all the time you guys put in. :)

The way Windows identifies an optical drive isn't really important. Does the drive read both CD and DVD media? Have you installed a burner program? Is this a replacement drive? Have you installed any different burning software? Are you using an 80 Wire 40 pin IDE cable?

1) Reads neither (just checked, again) 2) Yep, Nero 6.6 I believe. 3) No, I'm pretty sure this is the original drive we ordered with the machine 4) Nope 5) Yes. 3 is kinda up in the air...I do seem to remember swapping out *someone's* drive several year back, but I don't think it was this one.

So you have installed two different burning softwares? The reason I ask is because there is something called ASPI layer drivers that are used for burning and also scanners and some software. There are different versions of ASPI drivers and Nero will replace the ones WinXP originally had. That is usually OK but what can happen is a different version or a different brand of burning software can overwrite the ASPI drivers. There is also something called upper and lower filters that sometimes can be deleted to fix your problem. Did this problem happen all of a sudden or all at once or don't you know when?

I'm not really sure when it happened...I'm gone for school most of the time, except for the summer and around Christmas. And no, there's just one burning software package installed...just Nero. I have no idea what's going on with this drive...-_-

Google for upper and lower filters and learn how to remove them.

Googled, followed the instructions as posted here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314... but I don't have either entry under the key where it says they'll be. Neither Upper nor Lower Filters. Any idea what this could mean? I'm still searching google for people who also didn't find these entries.