Hi, my name is Michelle and I'm having problems with my daughters computer. Windows Media player stopped recognising the philips dvd 8801 as a burner a while ago (although it would play cds) but to be fair I thought it was something that her Grandad had done as he was messing with the computer at Xmas. Sonic (preloaded software) still recognised the burner. However, she turned the computer on today and Norton said there were 15 issues and to uninstall and re-install. I clicked uninstall which it did but then when the computer rebooted the cd-rw/dvd-rw was nowhere to be seen. I went to microsoft and managed to get the drive back but now its not registering as a burner at all, just plain cdrom. Windows media still does not recognise the burner and neither does Sonic (which was recognising it before). I would be very grateful if someone can help. Apologies if the answer is somewhere in a different thread.

Thanks

Chelle

Hi Michelle.
Start by going to Control Panel, System Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, then go to IDE Devices. Uninstall the Primary and Secondary IDE's. Reboot, and allow windows to autodetect devices. Windows will show the device as CD. Download and Install IMGBurn, and see if it recognizes a dvd in the device. If not, report back.

Thanks, am going to attempt it tonight - will let you know how I get on kk

Have tried all that you said. The computer auto detected it but it still only recognises it as a cd drive. It will play dvds but I am still unable to burn cds - it tells me to add a burner but the Philips one was/is a burner? Its driving me mad :-(

Don't believe what crappy explorer shows you.
Go into devicemanager and you will see the real drive / info.

Use cdburnerxp, burrrn and imgburn to burn stuff onto discs. Use good media like Verbatim.

It seems that Norton Antivirus has caused a conflict with the dvd/cd rw. I spent 3 hours yesterday with some technician at Symantec who proceeded to mess the whole computer up! I ended up losing all connection with the analyst at Symantec, the computer would only start up in "safe mode" time and time again but eventually I managed to get it to start up normally. They messed with msconfig but again I managed to get that sorted. So I have completely removed Norton and the drive now says dvd-rw but a burner still cannot be detected. I will try unistalling the primarys and secondarys again and see if that has any bearing. The analysts (yes two of them) admitted that Norton was causing a conflict. The first one removed Norton completely cos every 6 days it was flashing a message that it had 15 issues to be fixed and the only way to fix it was to uninstall and reinstall Norton so the analyst installed Norton 360 v.2. It was when he first removed it that the drive suddenly changed from cd-rom to dvd-rw. Yep - thats 3 hours of my life I won't be getting back lol

Hope you get it all sorted out and working okay...

So, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the primary and secondarys(again) and again, nothing! I looked in services and it kept saying that imapi needed starting even thought it was set to automatic - to cut a long story short it was a fault with windows xp service pack 2 that my Father-in-law downloaded earlier this year!! After some investigation it seems this is a common fault (i.e. stopping some cd-rw/dvd-rw being recognised as burners). So, I downloaded the service pack 3 - held my breathe and - Abracadabra - FIXED My burner is back and its only took me about 3 months to try and sort it. All it needed was a microsoft hotfix - I hope this information may be of some use to others - thanks for all your help

luv

Chelle