Hi,

I have an NEC ND-3550A DVD+RW drive which has been working perfectly fine since I brought this around a year or so ago.

Now all of a sudden I'm having a few problems with this.
If I go into my computer the drive shows as it should - DVD+RW.
If I put a re-writable DVD into the drive it then changes to DVD-ROM.
If I view the properties it shows it as a CD Drive.
I am using Nero to burn data and when I am trying to do this it list the name of the drive...NEC ND-3550A...but I cannot burn anything.
Things I have tried already:

- Removing the drive from device manager - When I reboot the PC it recognises there is new hardware and installs it, again though the same thing happens as above.
- Reseating the IDE cables - Same result as above.
- Installing a new DVD-RW drive but again the same thing happens as above.

As this occurs with the new DVD-RW drive I installed can only assume this is a windows problem. Just wondered if anyone had anything I could try before I re-install XP?

Thanks

Did you install any optical drive related software lately? Sonic, Nero, INCD???

Yeah forgot to mention that.

I have not installed any new software recently. The only thing I did do was to attach an external hard drive to the PC which is working fine.
However I am not sure if the drive was working correctly before I installed the external hard drive as I don't use it all that much.

Have you reloaded Windows from scratch since the last time the NEC drive worked properly, or since before you installed the new drive?
If so, you must load the drivers for your mboard after setup has finished, particularly the main chipset drivers, in order for your IDE drive controllers to be recognized properly, which determines whether optical drives are recognized properly.
If you haven't done that, or if you're not sure whether you did, load the drivers for your mboard, particularly the main chipset drivers.
If you load drivers from the web, brand name system builders and mboard makers often do not have the main chipset drivers listed in the downloads for your model - in that case you must go to the maker of the main chipset's web site, get the drivers, and load them.

For the NEC.
Is it only the DVD-RW disk that causes this problem?

Media compatibilty.
All optical drives are sensitive as to which media you use in them - which brands and types you use - some are a lot more picky than others. Many work fine, but there are always some that won't in your model properly, and they may also not be recognized properly. If the rewritable DVD is a brand or type you haven't tried before, that may be your problem - try one you tried before that worked fine.
There are often lists of which media works fine in your model on the manufacturer's web site, and/or in reviews of your model on the web in which they test various media in it.

Your NEC drive, and maybe and the other DVD burner drive, require 80 wire IDE data cable connections because their faster speeds require UDMA66 - UDMA 4 in Windows. All DVD combo burner drives capable of 16X DVD - and DVD + do - all previous optical drives only need to be connected to 40 wire data cables if there are no hard drives on the same cable because none run faster than UDMA33 - UDMA 2 in Windows. Is that what you had/have them connected to?
If you have/had them connected to 40 wire IDE cables, they may work okay for awhile but will eventually produce data errors.

If you used a 80 wire data cable for the NEC and you've used the drive a lot, optical drives don't last forever - it may be starting to fail.
But that doesn't account for the new drive not being detected properly.

If you've fiddled with the 80 wire data cable since it last worked properly, before the time you mentioned above, it could very well be damaged.
It is common to un-intentionally damage IDE data cables, especially while removing them - the 80 wire ones are more fragile. What usually happens is the cable is ripped at either edge and the wires there are either damaged or severed, often right at a connector or under it's cable clamp there, where it's hard to see - if a wire is severed but it's ends are touching, the connection is intermittant.
Another common thing is for the data cable to be separated from the connector contacts a bit after you have removed a cable - there should be no gap between the data cable and the connector - if there is press the cable against the connector to eliminate the gap.

If in doubt replace the data cable - it's a cheap thing to try.

Whether the cause of data errors is a faulty drive or the wrong cable or a faulty cable, when the errors have exceeded a threshold, XP will automatically run the drive in PIO mode, the slowest mode, if they do - they (burner drives) will not be recognized properly in PIO mode. If the errors continue, XP eventually inserts lines in the Registry that force the drive into PIO mode all the time.

See this:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devic...
If the connection your optical drive is on is in PIO mode, try setting it to DMA if available, save settings, go back in, see if it has changed to a higher mode. Both your DVD combo burner optical drives should be in Ultra DMA mode 4, if they are capable of 16X or greater DVD + or DVD - .
If drive won't go out of PIO mode, you need to remove some lines from the registry, but if you haven't cured what caused the data errors, Windows will immediately or in a short time insert the lines again and it will be in PIO mode again.

Look in Device Manager. If there are yellow ? marks beside the DVD combo drive(s) model number, you need to remove some lines from the registry.