CD burner asks for CD-R but already loaded

[Not sure if this should be here or on the hardware forum, apologies if I've got it wrong]

A retired friend asked me this evening about a PC problem he has.

His PC (running XP I think) is around 18 months old, but he's not burnt a CD on it before. When he tries to burn one using Nero Essentials it asks to load a CD-R although one is already in.

He's tried with several blank CD-Rs to no avail.

I've asked him to check that the Recording tab is available on the drive's Properties dialog; also to see if he can read CDs on the drive.

Although a poor batch of media could be the reason, clearly it could be a faulty drive. Apart from actually replacing the drive is there any, preferably simple way of testing the drive?

Try one of the free CD/DVD burning apps that are around instead of Nero??

Is he trying to burn 700M onto a 650M disk?

The disk is the right way up

Why not just try to write a small file or directory to a CD?

Forget Nero, can't you just right-click on a file/directory and Send To the CD drive? It'll waste one CD but they are fairly cheap nowadays.

Some burners are fussy about the make of CD they will accept, Try a CD from another manufacturer. My Sony drive is like this - it likes Sony or Verbatim discs; won't recognise any others.

Must admit I've experienced this.

I've offered to pop over and have a look, and would take some of my blanks, but for various reasons for both of us this is unlikely to be before May.

I've now heard that he found another CD that he'd got from elsewhere and it burned fine.

The 'failing' ones were Datasafe, I'm not aware that they're a troublesome brand. I'll see about trying one on my PC to see if they work on it.

I've used Datasafe CD's & DVD's on numerous different makes of drive over several years and I've never had a single one fail to burn correctly.

Is the firmware of the drive the latest available? Might be worth a "Google" to see if there is a more up-to-date firmware.

[Edit - typo]

Edited by deleted (Tue 23-Mar-10 16:40:53)

I've no idea, and I suspect the person with the problem may well not care, as he now knows he can burn CDs.

As GeoffB said earlier some drives are, or seem to be, brand sensitive to media. I've certainly experienced it on different PCs.

The only time I've experienced significant media failures is a friend who bought an own brand cake from a well known PC chain, had >50% failure rate. Given that media is generally pretty cheap I readily persuaded her to buy reputable brands. I tend to use Verbatim or Philips at the moment. They work on my kit, that's pretty important to me

I've now been able to try a couple of the Datasafe CDs on my PC. They work just fine. So it has to be a burner/media incompatibility issue. Goodness knows how one finds those in advance though.

If anyone's interested - or perhaps everyone but me already knows - you can find the manufacturer of a CD using Nero.

Start Nero, load the CD (I assume DVD also). Click Recorder / Disc Info. A dialog box pops up with basic information, while holding down the Shift key click the Refresh button.

That told me the Datasafe were made by Ricoh Ricoh Company Limited; the HP that he successfully burnt was made by Moser Baer India Limited.