I have burned plenty of DVD-Rs in the past, and have never had any problems with the DVDs themselves. However, today I bought a new spindle of 50 DVD-R discs, and my computer can't read any of them! I tried putting several into both my burner and my DVD-ROM drive, but neither could detect one of these discs. They are technically identical to earlier discs I have used: DVD-R, 4.7GB, 16x, etc. The only difference is the brand: I previously used Maxell, and these new discs are Memorex.
It's not that it gives me an error message or anything. My computer simply ignores the discs, and acts as if the drive is empty.
I don't see any reason why my computer doesn't like this brand of discs, so is there anything I can do other than go back to Maxell? How can I get my computer to read these discs?
When the drive does not recognize a disc, it is saying that it does not understand the MID code on the disc. Some drives will attempt to write with a default write strategy to see if that works. It usually does not, and the resulting poor recording quality is incorrectly blamed on the intrinsic quality of the disc. Your drive does the smarter thing--it refuses to ruin a disc by attempting to use just any laser power level. It refuses to recognize the disc at all.
If your drive is new enough, thee may be a newer set of instructions for it to recognize more discs. These instructions are known as firmware, and they are stored in a memory chip on the drive. By "flashing" the memory chip with a newer version of firmware, you may be able to update the drive to recognize the discs. If not, you may have to go back to the Maxell discs and hope that the new Maxell discs from Taiwan will also work. What is the model of your drive and its version of firmware? (If you have Nero software, that information will show up in the InfoTool utility.)
Ah, I just went to the Philips website, downloaded the firmware update (GP03), followed the instructions, and installed it, and restarted the computer, blah blah blah.
BUT IT STILL DOESN'T READ THE DISC! Does that mean my DVD burner is officially obsolete?
Your drive is a very recent one, the Philips equivalent of the Lite-on LH-20A1P; and it should be able to work the the discs you have. If it is not working properly, try right-clicking My Computer, opening the Device Manager, uninstalling your drive, then refreshing the system so that it recognizes the drive again and refreshes the drivers for it.
I found one Philips owner with a 64-bit Windows XP operating system who had the same problem but flashed the eeprom with a utility to get it to work. Your drive is not obsolete in any way, but getting it to work correctly is a puzzle.
Puzzle indeed, I still can't get it to work with these Memorex discs. But it's alright, I guess I'm just going to switch to Maxell discs again... thank you for all your help, though, I did end up upgrading my firmware. =)
