For the past couple of weeks my HP 9350i CDRW drive has not been recognizing any CD's I put in it. I've tried using a number of different programs and updates, and have been led to the conclusion that it must be a physical problem with the drive. The people I've talked to have said that it is cheaper to buy a new drive than to get mine fixed, since the 1 year warrenty expired about a month before it broke. I was wondering if anyone has any last ditch ideas before I pitch it: anything I can try doing to the drive myself or any other steps I might have overlooked. If not, what's a good cheap cdrw drive I should be looking at? Thanks, Nick

Hi NRG... Im not to sure what ur prob is ,the only thing i could sujest is (have u tried a cleaning disk?) as there could be a spec of dust on the lense. If you are to buy another cdrw i would go for a LITE-ON as they will copy anything without question, and u get nero with it to, I paid £70 for mine but i think it was well worth it. Good Luck.............Rod

If you boot from a win98 floppy with cdrom support and still can't access it, that pretty much eliminates a system problem. If you have one of those air prayers in a can, you could try spraying air in through the loading slot to try and blow out any dust. Or if you are handy with tools you could try taking the covers off to clean it. If it's not dust then a new drive is probably called for.

http://208.158.105.20/c_134.htm Buy a LiteOn ! Burners are getting cheaper all the time.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I have tried booting from a floppy and still no go. I've tried just blowing in the drive to see if it was dust, but if a lens cleaning CD actually works, I might give that a go... Thanks again ps-can I still use the directCD software that came with my HP writer with a different one?