SHW 1635S Firmware upgrade, then FAIL!!

Hey everyone! Ive had a liteon 1635S for about a year now and alls been going swell untill this week. it started making coasters and wasnt too happy burning audio cds. So i thought hrmn maybe ill upgrade the firmware (i cannot recall what it was....drives made in July 2005) to YSOV. And boom everything installes propperly... restart and now my drive wont read ANY CDS. its recognised by windows (XP CORP) and everything like that, it just wont do what its made to do - read/write dvds/cds. So then i tried downgrading the firmware to a few different ones and still no luck!! HELP!!!
I dont wanna fork out even more money for this but im fearing that is what will happen... THANKS IN ADVANCE! good to have joined a new forum also!

Hi! The current firmware for your drive is YS0Z (not YS0V). You can get it from codeguys.rpc1.org. You may also try the latest "test" firmware YV6P (linky) - it might shake things up again.

If all else fails, test the drive in another PC before replacing it.

hey I put a DVD movie in last night and it worked fine...... so i went through checking burnt Data, audio, vcd.etc and also "real" copied of them all..... so far only dvd movies have worked...

i am having the same issue right now. i can burn DVDs all day long. but when i go to burn a data cd, it ask for a blank cd. i have tried 2 different brands and nothing. i get lucky here and there. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks.