Lightscribe DVD Burner being detected as a CD drive.

Elimination

I cant figure it out, ive tried a bunch of things, but for some reason my fresh install of XP SP3 is detecting my DVD Burner as a CD drive, and wont accept blank media for burning any longer or read DVD's. This is really strange i dont really understand why its doing this, never had this issue before. What could be causing it? o_O

bowen

Seems like you're missing drivers. Or maybe you didn't enable recording? Right click on the drive and go to Recording, then see if it's disabled or something like that. I'll look for more specific info on XP though.

Elimination

I dunno it never did this before. I'm trying to re-install the drive now....now its being detected as a DVD-RAM wtf.

Shens

Try updating the firmware for the DVD burner. You can find firmware updates on your manufacturer's website, most of the time.

Elimination

Shens wrote: »

Try updating the firmware for the DVD burner. You can find firmware updates on your manufacturer's website, most of the time.

I was wondering if there was something like that, i didnt know they had firmware on them. Though the drive is quite new (less than a year old.). I will try that and get back.

Elimination

Ok ive hunted forever and can't find any drivers for it. It's an LG Lightscribe super multi (black) DVD burner,

It's getting annoying not being able to burn anything.

Also the model number it is coming up with is this: DVD-RAM GSA-H55L

The model number is right, and corrisponds with an actual device on the LG web site, but when i download the firmware and try to install it says ERROR and tells me the device cannot be found, and that my device is GDS-H54L so i tried that driver too, and gave me the same error.

FyreWulff

Try removing the device via the Device Manager and see what happens when Windows tries to reinstall it?

xzzy

The way I understand it, DVD/CD combo drives have two lasers in them.. a DVD one, and a traditional CD one.

This means one or the other can fail, causing the drive to ignore any disc of that type. Can't verify if this is your problem, this wouldn't cause windows to see it as a different kind of drive, but I have had it happen before and it was extremely hard to troubleshoot because it produces absolutely zero errors.

Basically if DVD's don't work and CD's do.. this is probably what has happened. Buy a new one.

FyreWulff

Lightscribe drives are kind of peculiar though, because you can use them to make labels with special DVDs/CDs. It uses the burning laser to etch an image.

Elimination

xzzy wrote: »

The way I understand it, DVD/CD combo drives have two lasers in them.. a DVD one, and a traditional CD one.

This means one or the other can fail, causing the drive to ignore any disc of that type. Can't verify if this is your problem, this wouldn't cause windows to see it as a different kind of drive, but I have had it happen before and it was extremely hard to troubleshoot because it produces absolutely zero errors.

Basically if DVD's don't work and CD's do.. this is probably what has happened. Buy a new one.

This is not my problem, this only happened when i re-formatted and switched from Win 7 to XP and now it no longer functions properly. Also i tried re-installing it via device manager and it still detects it as a CD Drive/DVD-RAM I believe it does still read DVD's it just wont burn anything because windows isnt detecting it as a burner. Also it wont burn CD's or DVD's.

Vulpine

As it's less than a year old, could you try getting it replaced by the manufacturer? At least that would let you determine if it was an OS or drive issue.

Elimination

Vulpine wrote: »

As it's less than a year old, could you try getting it replaced by the manufacturer? At least that would let you determine if it was an OS or drive issue.

I'm almost 100% certain its the OS, since it was burning perfectly, then i reformatted and it did this. I wish i knew where the box was for it with the disc in it. I misplaced it somewhere when i moved, im sure it has the driver in that box.