Hi MamaBird,

A lot of inkjet colour printers will do this.

They actually have an adapter that you clip on and place the DVD or CD in. It then feeds and prints fine.

You have to have an inkjet printer that is capable to print dvd or cd media. I have an epson r1800. does very good quality printing

Thanks guys, I did finally figure that out at the Micro Center today. Got an HP Photo 5360 printer for $80. Already have ink for HP's as I have a regular HP ink jet so thought it would be cheaper than buying a new bigger unit. Man, I've really gotten out of the loop with this tech stuff since I've been in Academia for the past 10 years!!

Anybody got ideas on why my Optiarc won't recognize video of any kind or any format since activating/inactivating the booktype setting in DVDFab? (One of the suggestions from above.) I'm currently installing my new external LG, or trying to. The autoupdate feature seems to be stuck right now. Anyway, I noticed the Autorun feature doesn't work on it either. Not sure yet if it recognizes video media or not

I'll keep you posted on how my original problem works out with the new drive and maybe I should start a new thread re: the loss of my Optiarc to recognize video media.

Cheers,
Mamabird

If you want to just reinstall the device driver for the burner, and assumming you have control panel in classic view, try the following:

Start>Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager Click the + next to DVD/CD drives. Right click your drive and uninstall. Reboot so windows reinstalls the drives drivers. Should be good to go.

Hi,

This is what I would do. 1st go to device manager and uninstall the CD from there. 2nd remove the DVD drive from the laptop. 3rd reboot the laptop. 4th reinsert the DVD drive and let the O/S reinstall the drivers for it (the might have become slightly corrupted).

I am not totally sure that you can remove the DVD drive from the laptop easily but most of them can be pulled out in order to put something else in it's place.

This is what I do when mine gets strange. I don't even reboot. I just pull it out, wait for the "device disconnected" chimes from windows, then plug it back in: New Hardware Found!.

I agree that the vast majority of the time that works but sometimes it does not fix the problem until after a reboot is done before putting the drive back in.

Hi all, I have done everything suggested and every comibination of everything suggested above, including doing a system restore to a point before installing and dealing with the issues of DVDFab 5.0.2.0 as noted above. After having tried all of the above including a system restore to when the cd/dvd-drive was working, my system doesn't recognize the cd-rom drive at all now, under any circumstances. I've not even gotten to try my new LG external 'cause I've spent all this time on getting my system back to the point where my internal cd/dvd-drive works. I'd call Gateway support which would likely be a gruelling 2+ hours with questionable results, but since this problem didn't exist until changing the DVDFab Platinum settings, I doubt they'll be able to do much for me anyway.

I do know Windows always works better after a complete format of hard drive and reinstallation of Windows and all programs, and I'm sure that would fix the problem - but it takes SO long, and I really don't want to have to do that. (That's what I had to do the last time I had a problem this serious because Gateway support is virtually worthless.) Plus, I always end up losing precious files, not counting the tremendous amount of time involved, not the least of which is explaining to Microsoft why I need to reinstall Windows so I'm allowed to reinstall Windows - yet again!

Thanks,
Mamabird

Hey Mama,

Don't gateway have a system recovery disc that brings it back to a state like it was just delivered?

Also, it really sounds like your internal burner is dead or dying but I really would do a clean install of Windo$e to confirm that, including a full reformat of the hard disk.

Naughty, naughty though... You SHOULD be backing up "Those precious files" on a regular basis anyway.

What would happen if the hard disk died?

Hey Mama,

It really does sound like your DVD is dying, and I do have to agree with Gregboy the you should be backing up your "Precious files" to some where. An external hard drive works wonders with backing them up and so does DVDs. If you have access to an external hard drive then you can do a full backup to it (or take an image of your hard drive so that it can be restored in case the clean install does not fix the issue).

Anyhow you might try to see if you can go into safe mode to see if the DVD is recognized there or not. You can also try to boot off of your windows CD/DVD to see if it is recognized or not. If you can see anything on a DVD or can boot from it then the drive might not be bad yet. But Gateway is not really known for using high quality parts in their equipment and the 1st level tech support is rotten IHMO.

Hi again Mama,

Agree with the rest of the gang...signals, GregiBoy and DaGeekster...apologies if I've left anyone out.
As I said before, I'm not sure how much time you want to or can devote to this "burner".

Based on what's occurred, I doubt very much if it will show up in device manager, but is it recognized in your bios?

If this burner is still salvagable, I think that you may have two chances left; assuming that nothing to date has worked, including DaGeekster's safe mode suggestion.
1. The EEPROM or firmware is corrupted (EEPROM = Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory...this is unique to each specific unit and most ppl do not have this backed up).
Here, I would download (new download) and install the latest firmware available for your burner...it should be available from Gateway...and keep your fingers crossed.

2. The registry is corrupted due to faulty uninstalls/installs.
You can use a patch to attempt to recover your drive.

Agree with others about backing up.
Personally, I keep a recent clone of everyone's system hdd. It seems no one else in my family will bother to do this, but since they all come to me with "Daddy, can you fix my computer?" ...insert image of 20 yo daughter batting her eyes..., I've learned my lesson. This practice has kept me from a world of pain.

Hard drives are dirt cheap and so is the software to image partitions and clone whole hdds.

Anyway, best of luck...

Here's that registry patch:

OK since we are on the subject of drives I have a strange problem with mine. It is a Dell ispirion laptop. A few years ago when The sony debacle about them putting spyware on peoples computer was going on there was acertain movie I dont remember what one but anyways when I tried to decrypt it it made my dvd drive not be able to play purchased movies you get all the encrypted copy protection garbage but will play a decrypted backup copy. I just have been living with it now I am curious if anybody knows whats up with that. Thank you all in advance.

Hi all, thanks for all the responses/help. Actually, when I got up this am the internal cd-drive starting that comforting "whir-r-r-r" and after that I could see it in Explorer. Still didn't recognize media of any kind. Ran a cleaner disk a few times, still nothing. Removed the lower/upper filters (that was one thing I hadn't done yet) - still nothing. Uninstalled the driver from Device Manager, turned it off, went to a meeting with a mentor friend of mine, took a nap, turned it back on and - wa-la! Back in business! I think it was the nap that did the trick! (Heh! Heh!)
The autorun feature doesn't work but I'll get on the Microsoft Forum and find the answer to that one pretty quickly. Seems like I've run into that problem before and it wasn't hard to fix.

As for backing up, you are all absolutely right, and I should know better - actually I do know better. But believe it or not, I was much better about it in undergrad and even med school, at least all my document files 'cause back then all I had was a CD-burner (Plextor, external). I always managed to lose a file here and there, but I got the better part of the "precious ones" - you know, like the in depth research stuff that can never be fully recovered if you lose it.

Now I have an external drive, same size as my internal, but believe me, residency is WAY harder than med school! Haven't even had the time to figure out how to do an "image burn" or whatever you do to back it up. I know that sounds crazy, but believe me, it's true, harder than med school I mean. It's supposed to be limited to 80-hr work weeks now, but what with having to continue studying, papers, presentations etc., it's really more like 90-100 hr work weeks. Hard to do much of anything after that! I'm backing up my video collection to the tune of like, 1 or 2 per week, if that, depending on the rotation I'm on! I started on my vacation at Christmas and of course was only able to get as far as I have because DVDFab (decryptor/shrink) was SO EASY TO USE!!! But being on LOA right now for 4 weeks, I decided to buy the Platinum version and get a little more in depth - 'course it helps that they made an offer that's hard to refuse!

Anyway, now I have the LG H60L, I plan to not use the internal one unless I need to run media on it for a presentation at the hospital. NOW I'm going to get started on backing up a few things on the LG to see if I can get it to work like I want it to!

Oh! AND I'll plug in my external drive and see if I can figure out how to back up my hard drive!

Thanks again for all your help, everyone! You've been super, oh-so-patient and I really appreciate it. I'll check back in to let you know how things go with the DL burning on the LG.

Cheers,
Mamabird

Hey Mamabird,
Glad to hear you're up and running.
Congrats...

Personally, I keep autoplay disabled on all ODD's...I hate it.
You might want to check out Tweak UI. (Click on the link).
It's one of the

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP.

Simple matter to toggle autoplay on or off. It'll do lots more.

Hi Maineman,

You know, I remember Tweak UI from back in the Windows 95 days. Didn't know it was still around - I'll have to give it a try, I sure liked it before although it seemed a little "buggy" back then. Yeah, sometimes Autoplay irritates me, but most times it seems kinda handy. I really like the idea of being able to toggle it on and off!

Thanks for the idea,
Mamabird

I am not sure if TweakUI is still around, I think that now they do call them "PowerToys for XP" and you can get them from Microsoft. Be sure that is where you get it from. There are a few hacked copies of TweakUI on the net that are not really clean versions.

Yup, Tweak UI is alive and well. The link I posted ^^ (post #39) is secure and the download is direct from MS. The current version is stable and not at all like the buggy version we all remember from yesteryear.

I missed the link I just wanted to make sure that the OP got the right version.

I have used both Plextor and Liteon burners with a high degree of success using just about any blank. Both of the drives allow you to set the book type to DVD-ROM which makes the recording compatible with most commercial DVD players. I have screwed up before and left the booktype set to DVD+R and it would not play on my television using my regular DVD player.

Lightscribe is a joke. Even on the highest quality setting the label looks somewhat washed out and it does not do color. Why spend the extra money on DVD blanks when you can get inkjet printable DVD's much cheaper.

Epson and HP make a few printers that include a plastic tray that you place the printable blank in. Then the printer pulls in the blank under the inkjet print head to print the label. Does a marvelous job printing labels. The Epson uses a lot of ink so the cartridges don't last long and they are very expensive. Don't know about HP. I haven't had personal experience with them, just read HP's advertisements. If you go with printable CDs or printable labels take a look at Surething Label Maker. That is one app that prints most of the gum labels and also supports the direct printing ink jet printers. I have been very pleased with the software and the cost is extremely reasonable.

I am not sure what you are recording that would require you to split a DVD on a DL Blank but I have only seen two movies that wouldn't fit directly on a DL blank. I mainly use DVD Decxrypter, Nero's Burning ROM, and DVD Shrink to make DVD copies. Hope this answer help answer your questions.

Hi Vbritt, I pretty much have everything worked out, I got the LG burner and it's working great with any and all media - at least it was until today (see below). I got the HP Photo D5360 and haven't set it up yet, waiting to get back to Michigan. I do have other HP printers though and they work well. The cartridges are refillable if you have the right ink refill company (I've used LD Products for years and I love them!)

As for splitting DVD DL's, I think you misread my original post, or I didn't express myself well. I was trying to split singles and/or use DL and couldn't get either to work at all. Turns out the Sony Optiarc was the albatross!

Now I have a new problem though: DVDFab keeps "seeing" the disk I want to copy as being in the Optiarc drive (E), according to the log. However, in DVDFab the only drive I have selected to read/write from is Drive F - the LG drive. No matter how many times I shut-down, restart or whatever, it still thinks I've selected the E drive (Optiarc) even though I've obviously selected the F (LG) drive to read from/write to and I can't find any thing . I do think I've seen someone else with this problem though so I'll do a search on CD Freaks to see if I can find the answer to the issue.

But if you have an idea, I'll take it!

Cheers,
Mamabird