DVD/CD Burner Drive help needed HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GWA-4164B

[Isayungawa]

Hi. Please bear with me. I just signed up and this is my first post. I am somewhat technologically challenged!

The problem I am having is my dvd/cd burner will read and burn CD-R but will not recognize dvd what so ever.

My drive is a HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GWA-4164B

I know it is a P.O.S! Ok, I get that. But it worked fine until I had to reformat my pc...thank you Trojan from FB!

My pc is a Gateway GT5012 and the drive is made by samsung/toshiba...?

Now, I have searched for a month to find a fix for this. I have read everyone eles's issues with this device. It could be the driver, firmware, need to delete the upper and lower something or other, ect..............

How hard can this issue be to fix? My burner is not shot - my pc is not recognozing the fact it is also a DVD player/burner.

Will someone who has an actual idea of how to fix this please respond to this. I am more than willing to provide any further system info that you might need.

Thanks,

Tommy

PS - If I cannot get this fixed I will have to put in a new drive. Any suggestions? I am a simple guy. Burn music cd's, burn to DVD for pc backup n stuff.

GRRRRRRRRR THIS SUCKS!

[geno888]

Hi and welcome to the forum

There are two main possibilities that can cause this problem.

First, the drive contains two separate lasers, one for CD and another for DVD media. If the DVD laser is damaged, this explain why the drive is not able anymore to recognize any DVD disc. It is only a coincidence that the problem arose after reformatting the computer. In this case, the only solution is a new drive.

Second, being the drive rather old, is possible that there is some dust over the optical pickup. In this case, you need to clean it, but this requires to open the drive, so if you don’t feel comfortable with this thing, maybe you can ask a friend to do the job.

However, because of prices are not really high (you can find a burner around €20), maybe a new drive is the easiest solution anyway

[chef]

You don’t mean BLANK DVD media by “dvd media”?

In this case, what is the installed OS?
Does the drive recognize and read pressed DVD media?

PS. HL-DT-ST stands for [B]H[/B]itachi [B]L[/B]G [B]D[/B]igital [B]T[/B]echnology [B]ST[/B]orage division (AFAIK).