Hello all, nice community you have here

I'll go straight into my problem:

As the title says, I have a few months old ASUS DRW-1608P2 (FW 1.37, pristine lenses) that suddenly stopped recognizing written DVDs. And just them.

It still writes blank DVDs (+/-R) and CDs, and it reads with no problem CDs, CDRWs and DVDRWs. But since most of my work is backed up on former blank DVDs - the one media it won't read - you can imagine my frustration.

Few computer HW & SW specs:
P III/ 1GHz
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD
Win XP SP2
Nero 7.0.0
AV & firewall installed since forever

Except for Nero, all software (including drivers) is up to date.
And I already checked Nero, it was/is not the problem.

Before this weirdness striked, I've made no changes to my machine, be it software or hardware, so I don't think there's anything to backtrack.

Can any of you guys kindly assist me in restoring the functionality of this writer?
I'm far from being a noob, but this issue seems to be owning me...

Thanks in advance!

Wow, thanks for the massive input, guys

I managed to change the unit, though I still feel that the problem could've been actually solved

You have used crap media before - nothing lasts forever anyway.