Going Insane....

Zangetsu

Last week I was able to burn CD's DVD's etc not a bother. I went to Edinburgh for the weekend and when I came back every DVDR and DVDRW drive doesn't work....

I've tried 6 blank dvd's (3 from different brands/boxes) on 4 different machines and its all reading the disks as 0 bytes free / 0 bytes used.

Head is melted... HELLLLLP!

aidan_walsh

DVD+R or DVD-R? Which do you normally use?

Zangetsu

Always +R

Biggins

Did you buy all your blank dvd's from the same source/business?

Zangetsu

Nope, some from a 2 people in work and some from home. All different sources. Strange eh?

Biggins

Very... you brought your laptop with you to Edinburgh?

Another thing... the other 3 machines you mention, are they your own, in your own place?

Zangetsu

Not a laptop, desktop, I've tried my own and some in work.

Biggins

Sorry to be a pain with the questions...

When you tried all the newer blank dvd's, did you try them all in your own machine first?

Zangetsu

No answers without questions!

Yeah I did use them in mine first, could that have fcuked them up?

Biggins

Yes.

I am thinking that maybe, just maybe, your pc recieved a "spike" or "surge" - an sudden increase of electrical current that for a nano-second has effected your dvd-writer and/or the cpu that is translating the digital data being sent to the blank dvd.

Remember that digital means "binary" and such a surge would blank out all positives and negatives in binary code.

Option (a) - All story short, only by getting a black dvd, testing it in another machine FIRST and then testing the same make in your own, will you be able to localise the problem more.
If one works and yours don't, it might be time to replace the dvd writer.
(there's also the possibility of the dvd writer software/drivers being damaged. A simple uninstall/reinstall however should sort that out)

* Ideally, you should be borrowing someone elses dvd-writer, insert it into your pc and do a test from there. If the fault then occurs again, you have narrowed down the problem more and thus know its your motherboard that has the problem.
Being able to do the above however for some is not always possible.

So your left with option (a)

By the way, if you are spike sensitive or in a spike area, for the sake of 15/20 quid, buy a surge protect socket extension.
Dixons/Currys, etc will have them.
Other-wise plug out physically your equipment when not in use.

I've heard and repaired this problem so many times before...

Zangetsu

Grand, thanks for your help! I'll let you know how it goes.

Biggins

As a temp answer buy/borrow an external harddrive and transfer your files to that and bring to friends machine or internet cafe to burn items.

Even a keyfob that holds 4/8 gigs of data wmight do the job for the sake of a few quid.
Example: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/KINGSTON-8GB-USB-2-0-MEMORY-STICK-DATA-TRAVELLER-FLASH_W0QQitemZ350127770472QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_FlashDrives_SM?hash=item350127770472&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1301|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318