Hi there and thanks in advance for your help! Please bear with the long details..im giving them to save u guys time :)
I have a Matshita UJ-840D DVD+-RW Drive in my vaio laptop which has stopped reading any burnt or empty DVD-Rs or DVD-RWs...rather it reads them as CDs and writable CDs but doesnt write to them (it says there are 0 bytes free and used). It opens CD Roms fine though.
1. My OS is Windows XP Home with SP3 (updated from SP2 2wks ago)
Windows used to be my main option for copy/paste, drag/drop data onto any DVDRW until i faced this problem a while back. I never needed any programs like ROXIO or Nero etc.
2.I installed Roxio anway to see if it fixes my problem now but it cant read or recognize any disk in my drive after inserting.
3. I faced the same problem a few months back and did a fresh reinstall of windows (system recovery) just 2 weeks ago to see if the dvd drive starts functioning properly. It did, until yesterday!!! :'(
4. Since its a Sony OEM machine the system recovery is an EXTREMELY tedious process which takes me 3 days everytime because I have to uninstall all the rubbish apps (trial versions etc) and install my own softwares, update windows and vaio etc etc etc SUCH A LOOONG process i honestly cant go through it again!! Please please give me a solution that doesnt require another system recovery (whats the point anyway if the drive stops working everytime after a while?)
Here's what i have done so far:
1. Uninstalled the device via Device manager and primary IDE channel.
2. Removed upper and lower filters from the relevant registry keys. Then rebooted to allow windows to read and install the device again. It reinstalls fine but the problem remains.
3. Installed the latest firmware via Vaio update ver 1.03 (it was already the latest version anyway)
4. Cleaned the lens with alcohol.
5. Unistalled reinstalled drivers. Current drivers are: cdrom.sys, imapi.sys, redbook.sys, storprop.dll. Driver version is 5.1.2535.0
6. Sony, miscrosoft, and matsushita completely UNHELPFUL.
7. My activities before this happened: Installed a linksys wireless router, and uninstalled Office XP. I did a system restore to before Office XP unistall (couldnt restore back to before router as there was no restore point) still problem remained.
:sigh:Please please please can somebody help me fix this.....!!!!!!!!