Philips DVD8631 no longer reading blank DVDs

[taylowendy]

I have a Philips DVD8631 drive running on a Dell Dimension 8400, Windows XP. The drive has been running perfectly until now. I went to erase a DVDRW and now when I place a blank brand new DVDR in the drive, the drive shifts from DVD-RW Drive to CD Drive. I have already applied the firmware update from dell, removed and reinstalled Sonic RecordNow (which BTW is crap), and did a system restore. I dont know what else to do. Can anyone help me before I decide to reformat my system?

 

[mailpup]

I would replace the drive before reformatting the system. It sounds like the optical drive is failing.

 

[raybay]

Most of those drives wear out quickly... if you get a year out of them you are lucky. Heavy use and you might get five to seven months. When they replace them under warranty, they are only warrantieed until the end of the original warranty.
Philips and Pioneer have been much more reliable for a longer time than the Sony (Ugh), HP (Ugh), Maxtor (Ugh), HLDS (Ugh), snd Sony NEC. We find the most reliable are Pioneer, Philips, Lite-On, Samsung, Teac... so I am surprised to hear of a Philips failing.

 

[LookinAround]

It can certainly be hardware but, still, this is worth a shot to try first...
See if this might apply [post=815753]CD/DVD or Disk Problems? How to Fix Problems Caused by Filters[/post]

 

[taylowendy]

I know it is not hardware problem

I know it is not a hardware problem. Whenever there is no disk in the drive it shows the drive as it usually shown. It is once I place a blank DVD, the drive automatically reverts to CD. This just problem just occurred after I had a DVDRW disk in and I used RecordNow to erase the disk. I can play recorded DVDs just fine, it is just the blank ones. Besides that, if I go under RecordNow, it shows that there is a DVDRW in the drive already. It is really weird. I really dont have the money to replace the drive because I just became unemployed, so any additional advice would be fantastic.

I will look at the filters tech page and see if that will help, but I am pretty much thinking on reformating the hard drive and start from scratch all over again. I have additional hard drives in the computer and an external hard drive to store my important files I dont want to loose. I was just hoping that there might be a way of correcting the problem without the reformat.

Again, any other advice would be fantastic and I will look at the filters page.

 

[mailpup]

I was just hoping that there might be a way of correcting the problem without the reformat.

Did you try what LookinAround suggested in his last post?