HL-DT-ST GSA-4082b A209 (Help)

I am new to this forum so I am unsure whether I am covering old ground with a problem I have with my combo drive. I have looked in the last 20 pages in this forum and viewed countless other sites for an answer to my problem with no luck. The silly thing is that it seems too simple.

My drive will only recognise DVD disks and no others. Therefore I cannot get the drive to recognise or read data disks, audio cd’s or anything else. Through windows explorer I can view files and contents on any DVD but no other disks.

In windows explorer the drive is recognised as DVD-RAM drive (D as a default and when I place an audio or data disk into the drive it will change to CD Drive (D however this is as good as it gets. I cannot browse or get any acknowledgement that there is a disk in the drive.

I have downloaded the A209 driver however this hasn’t helped.
I have removed the hardware in device manager and reinstalled it just in case there was a glitch in the setup but still nothing.

Historically I have never had any problem reading data from the drive and I have never burned anything on the drive previously until about two weeks ago when I tried to copy some word files to the drive (machine locked up during the process and I had to restart – gave up on the burning and didn’t continue with the process). I have not tried to use the drive to read anything since until this weekend so I cannot help but think they are connected.

I cannot recall installing or modifying anything on my machine to bugger it up (except the new driver A209).

If anyone can help it would be appreciated. If any further information is required I’ll post it.

The operating system is XP
Drive - GSA-4082b A209

It's not a driver, it is firmware, the software internal to the drive.

You could try it in a different machine, you could try flashing it with earlier versions of firmware (A206/A207/A208).

If you had the problem before you installed A209, then the problem is almost certainly not with the firmware. Firmware cannot fix hardware failure, or screwed up system software.

You don't mention what burning software you are using, things like Nero or Roxio would be superior to XP's built in recording.

Brother Vlad

Hello and welcome to the forum!

One thing isn't quite clear from your description : when you say that the drive will only read DVD discs, are you talking about DVD movie discs or burned DVD discs with data on them?
Also, the data discs the drive cannot read, are they DVD data discs or CD data discs?

Thanks for your help guys

I was using xp built in recording to burn the files i referred to in my first posting. They were just basic word documents. This was the first and only time i have tried to burn anything on the drive.

I was referring to DVD movie disks (original disks only). These i can browse through explorer and the drive seems to recognise them no problem.

CD Data disks (games and general software), and audio disks, all original disks straight from the shop i am having problems with. The drive just doesnt recognise them for some reason.

I have never tried to view burned disks from another machine so however given the problem, i am sure they wouldnt work either.

Ok, for starters, XP's built in recording will only burn CDs. It will not work with DVDs. For those you need dedicated burning software, such as Nero burning ROM.

Try booting into safe mode and see if you get the drive to recognise CDs then.

Thanks for the tip Karangguni

Unfortunately its doing the same thing still. I think will try moving the drive to a different machine and see how i go.

Iam not even trying to burn anything, just trying to load some kids software on the machine....

That is sound thinking as it will help eliminate software settings or windows setup as the cause of your problem. If the drive works on that other machine, then it should be a software/windows setup problem. If not, it's the drive.

It is possible for a drive to only be able to read/write DVDs and not CDs. There are two separate lasers in a writer, one for CDs and the other for DVDs. It is possible that the CD one is dead but the DVD one is still working. I'm just hoping this isn't what is wrong in your case, since the only solution to that is to get a new drive.