DVD Writer Drive Stopped Reading CDs

My 5 yr old Desktop has a LiteOn DVD+-Writer CD-Writer IDE drive which I depend on for backups to CD.

Recently it has stopped recognising and reading CDs although it will read all DVDs (film & software). For the last few months it had in its jaws a commercial music CD which might be slightly faulty but it played last time I tried it.

Any ideas? Drivers reported up to date.

Or should I just bin it and find a replacement on eBay?

Anyone know the difference between

• LiteOn SHM-165H6S (that I have)
• LiteOn SHM-165P6S

Only diff I can see is mine has LightScribe Technology.

Guess you've uninstalled the driver, rebooted and it still wont read a CD?

On time I had to unstall the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller driver and reboot to get Utlra DMA Mode 5 back from PIO Only mode (that was with XP) - too many CD/DVD drive errors forced PIO Only mode and read/write speeds became very slow. Although your drive can still read DVD's....

What is Utlra DMA Mode 5 / PIO Only mode and where do I see it?

This is XP.

I do see Utlra DMA Mode 2 under Primary IDE Channel for both devices. I have another DVD/CD Reader that reads both DVDs & CDs.

I had a couple of Samsungs do this, in fact one would write a CD but then wouldn't read it, this was just after a couple of years. Sent one back under 3 year warranty and got a refurb which eventually went the same way.

Ended up binning the Samsungs and getting two Sony-Liteons hope they dont go like yours. Running XP too but as soon as I plugged the Sony's in they were good to go and no read problems. So far still working after two years.

Sony makes LiteOns. does it?

Look like I better do the same.

If I uninstall the drivers & reboot, where will it find the drivers again? Have no discs.

If you see only Ultra DMA Mode 2 that's fine - I saw "Current Transfer Mode: PIO only" and had to use this fix http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=90043 because some data CD's couldn't be read and write speeds became very slow

Sounds like you need a new drive for sure if DMA is enabled and it's OK with DVD's - what annoys me about XP is sometimes it will say a device is working properly when it most definitely ain't!

I quite often encounter problems with CD/DVD drives, which for one reason or another wont read discs, and 9 times out of 10 uninstalling the driver and rebooting fixes the problem - it's a Windows driver so the OS reinstalls (enables) it on start-up.

Actually currently have a problem with a drive which often refuses to open from the tray button and I have to use the GUI to open it (or a paper clip!) - uninstalling the driver and rebooting hasn't helped with that though

Ugh! Just discovered that drive has corrupted all (3) CD-RWs I tested it with , but CD-Rs are OK.

It writes to a cd-r and then I guess it can read what it's written...

Funny that it corrupts rewritables - trying to salvage corrupted cd-rw's and dvd-/+ rw's has probably wrecked a couple of my drives...