Dell Inspiron 9300 CD Burn problems

[Big Al.]

1.5 year old Inspiron 9300. All of a sudden the DVD/CD drive will not recognize blank media, so I can't burn anything. No problem recognizing media with data, listening to CDs or watching DVDs is no problem.

But, I can't burn anything.

Any suggestions?

TYIA

[ThePassenger]

Do the blanks work in any other machine?

I'd suspect the optics on the drive are starting to fail (it takes a higher degree of calibration to burn than to read) but you usually get a little more warning of that.

Open up device manager and see if the drive is actually marked as a CD/DVD writer in it's properties, often 3rd party apps (most notably copy protection) can disable or muck around with this.

[Big Al.]

The CD drive came with the unit. It was working a couple of weeks ago but not anymore. It plays everything other than PC generated disc's.

[ThePassenger]

Installed any games recently? Perhaps played an oldish Sony Music CD?

I'd still hit the machine with the usual spyware sweeps both in safe mode and normal; but it probably is the optics going.

[Big Al.]

ThePassenger said:

Installed any games recently? Perhaps played an oldish Sony Music CD?

I'd still hit the machine with the usual spyware sweeps both in safe mode and normal; but it probably is the optics going.

Nothing at all installed other than the basics, as I consider it my mobile office.

Doine all the virus and spyware checks, all clean.

Looks like it'll have to go back to Dell.

for the pointers anyway.