Windows won't burn my CDs

Szechuanosaurus

So yeah, I used to be able to burn CDs just using windows. It'd let me open a blank cd, drag and drop files into the Explorer window and then I'd click the Burn CD option in the menu to the right of the window.

But I can't anymore.

When I try and open a blank CD, it tells me it's inaccessible. When I try and select files and then choose Copy The Selected Items and then choose the CD drive as a destination as per windows help instructions, it gives the same error.

I can't say exactely when this started happening because it's something I don't do all that often but it's possible it started after I upgraded my PC. However, that upgrade involved a motherboard, processor, RAM and graphics card but the HDD is still the original (with the original install of Windows XP) and the CD drive is still the same. So unless something got messed up when I reauthorised windows, I don't see how that could affect this. I'm using the same batch of CDs that I used to use and I've tried several of them, just incase one was faulty or something.

The CD drive works fine apart form this.

Anybody know what's up with this? Is there a free/trial CD burning app. that I could download to see if that works?

Thanatos

Have you tried this with multiple blank CDs?

Szechuanosaurus

Yeah. All from the same batch, but it's a batch that worked fine a couple of months ago.

embrik

Right-click the drive in Explorer. Choose the recording tab. Make sure "Enable CD recording on this drive" is checked. If it's not, check it and try again. If you're missing that tab, or it's already checked, something else is amiss.

robotbebop

Have you recently installed/uninstalled any CD burning software? Sometimes this can cause an issue with the Windows registry.

One thing that might work is going into Device Manager and Uninstalling the IDE Controller driver of the IDE controller the CD writer is connected to and rebooting. This forces Windows to reload it's own drivers and re-write the registry values.