Several months ago i installed a new pioneer DVR-A06U dvd/cd writer into my computer along with the enclosed software.ever sence then ive been unable to read anything but game cd's .when i put a burned cd in one of three cd players[the new one or the other 2 existing cd players] it fails to read the cd.i run winXP-pro,1gig ddr,p-4/2.53.I can put the cd in my lap-top and they read fine.HELP is it software or hardware or did i check the wrong box someware?

I'm pretty sure that this is a hardware problem. The burner is slightly out of calibration so that most CD readers can't read the burnt CD's. The laptop must be a little out of cal in the same way.

However, I would call Pioneer and see if they have any other idea. They will probably ask a few questions then tell you to RMA it.

Some information would help:

1. Is this a DVD reader & CD recorder or re-writer?
2. Is it a CD-R or CD-RW disk you used?
3. Which software was used to make the disk?
4. What did you put on the disk? Music or data?
[to play an audio disk, you need a special connection to the motherboard from the drive and there is usually only one connection on the board]

My guess is that the CD has been correctly burned, as indicated by the fact that it plays ok on your laptop [try it in yet another machine to check], and that the problem is with playback.

Look at "Control Panel > Multimedia Properties > CD Music".
The tick box for "Enable Digital CD Audio for this CD-ROM device" should be unticked unless you have a digital audio player.

Be careful though, because I'm no super expert on this.

Sylvander:

You said: [to play an audio disk, you need a special connection to the motherboard from the drive and there is usually only one connection on the board]

The connection allows you to play audio tracks directly (by piping the audio directly to the sound card) without CPU involvement. If you don't have the wire, you can still play the tracks with any media player, but that uses CPU resources.

Connecting the wire was an issue when CPU's were slow. Now it doesn't make any difference. Modern CPUs can still play the audio and do a dozen other things simultaneously.

This is a chance to correct errors in my knowledge & understanding.
SOME POINTS
1. I have a single audio cable connected from one of my CD-Drives [the CD-RW]. This is the only drive capable of playing audio CD's [and if I disconnect the cable I cannot hear audio CD's]. My connector is on the motherboard, not the sound card [it's not a PCI sound card - strange arrangement].
2. My PC still uses PIO [not DMA] so nothing by-passes my CPU [so far as I know].

See this http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/cd/audio.htm and "When I try to play audio CD's..."

It says:
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In order to be able to have CD audio play on your sound card, they need to be connected directly to it. Most CD-ROM drives come with a thin, three-wire cable to enable this. If the cable is not connected, or is connected improperly, the CD-ROM drive and sound card will be isolated.
You may find this confusing because you may notice that a piece of music, say stored as a WAV file on a CD, will still play even though music CDs don't. The reason is that the music is being played in a totally different way. In the first case, the WAV file is a computer file like any other, being played on the sound card by a computer program. In the second, the CD-ROM itself is playing the disk and converting it directly to an analog audio stream. It is this information that requires the direct connection. The distinction here is the difference between music in audio CD format and music in CD-ROM data format.
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So the big difference seems to be this stream of analoue audio signals produced by the CD-ROM drive when you play an audio CD. To hear those the cable MUST be connected.

Or have I got it wrong?