CD-RW not working properly

[lashfish]

I was referred to this site for help with a problem. My CD-RW drive is not reading any disc, but it will write to a disc. I have tried a cleaning CD already, but nothing happened. Under properties of the drive it says that the drive is working properly. There is no exclamation or question marks next to the drive in the device manager. Also I noticed under properties that the used space, free space, and capacity of the drive are all zero. I have also tried the search for a better driver, but it says that I have the best available. I have recieved a couple of messages saying that it is not formatted, but that is only every once in a while. I have the original drive and tried to reinsall that to see if the actual drive was the problem, but that didn't work either. My floppy drive will not read any thing either, saying that the disc is not formatted, but when I try to format it, it says it's unable to format the disc. I have windows XP. Can you help me?

[Paul Komski]

My CD-RW drive is not reading any disc, but it will write to a disc.
Not trying to be smart but if you cant read the disk how do you know you wrote to it successfully - or do the burned-to disks work ok in another pc.


Also I noticed under properties that the used space, free space, and capacity of the drive are all zero.This is normal if the "current session" contains no visible files. CDs report what has been successfully burned and not the capacity of the media itself.


Is there any difference in reading home made CDR and CDRW media and does the CD-Drive have any problem reading pressed proprietary CDROMs such as an original Windows Installation CD.

If the problem is a "closure" problem with the last session not being closed then try isobuster from http://www.smart-projects.net/main.htm and see if it can see stuff that you cannot see from mycomputer.

The floppy drive problem is common enough with bad floppy diskette media. They become corrupt very easily so try a brand new floppy diskette.

The fact that you are getting the same read problem (if I have understood correctly) with another CD-drive implies bad CD media or else a problem with your burning software (and is why it is important to know if proprietary CDs are readable).