about 2-3 days ago my dvd rom stopped recognizing blank dvd's or it recognizes them as just a cd. But it will recognize blank cd's and data disks. I did update the drivers but I have not been able to try a different brand of disk but they are the last 7 from a spindel of 50. All the others worked fine. This did happen one other time last week but I restarted my computer and the problem was gone. Any suggestions would be great.

Combination drives have TWO lasers in them. I am guessing your DVD laser is defective or dirty. If the drive has some miles on it then that is the most likely cause. DVD burners are cheap enough. You can buy one online for less than $30. Look at the link below.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

I personally like the liteon for $27.99. Their drives are noisy but they get the job done. That drive also comes with Nero essentials, which is a burner program.

Be sure to also buy a new 80 wire IDE cable. Your old cable will be 40 wire and will cause problems.

I agree with othehill, my combo drive won't writ to cd's but will to dvd's and reads both. combo drives have a laser for cds and another for dvds. Make sure you buy a new cable when you get new drive as he suggests too.

I've seen the problem where windows would read and write discs fine, but would sometimes recognize blank DVD discs as an audio CD with one audio track. This was on more than one PC and the problem would come and go. I haven't seen it for a long time, but I'm convinced it's a timing problem with windows and some motherboards.

By the way, the media didn't make any difference. Also there were some other people reporting this problem. I spent a lot of time researching it and never found a fix.

Thank you all. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to buy anything new but I was kind of wondering if that wasn't a possible problem. The comp is about 4 or 5 years old and i have definatly taken advantage of its writing capabilities. especaly the product suggestion since money is tight right now.

Well if you want to try more things before giving up on the drive the first thing to try would be to perform a system restore to a time prior to this problem. Start> help and support> system restore.

I tried a system restore earlyer today to a date two weeks back. do you think i should try farther back or any other suggestions?

You are the only one that knows when the drive quit working right. If you decide to try an earlier date you should first undo the system restore you just tried.