-i have been using nero for awhile( seems to come with most burners)
i have 2 LG burners installed and when i updated my nero 7 They both stopped acknowledging anything DVD only reads/burns cd formats.

-This laptop came with Vista and I had a computer whizz/friend get rid of that and install XP Professional. Since then I have always had XP refer to my drive as either a CD drive or a ROM drive

First thing to do would be to look for an appropriate XP/Vista driver on the manufacturer's website to install and maybe flash the firmware

Secondly try using an older version of your burning software... or maybe try another burning program.

Hello joannebratt,

Did you do a "clean" install or a "repair" when you wrote that you "formatted" the HD twice? Also you didn't say whether or not you tried running the Windows restore program before you wiped your HD. It may be moot at this point in time because the data Windows would have needed to restore your PC are probably gone. However, with Windows one never truly knows, so you could give it a try anyway.

Another thing you might try is using your backup CD's to fix your PC. You do backup your files regularly now don't you? ;) As for Burner software I use Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009, and I can't say enough good things about it. It burns to CD faster than any other program I've used for those purposes. The interface is user friendly, and their community forum is well established. Here's a link to their home page, it's good stuff...

http://www2.ashampoo.com/webcache/html/1/home_2_USD.htm

I am following this thread with much interest as I have had a similar problem from day one. This laptop came with Vista and I had a computer whizz/friend get rid of that and install XP Professional. Since then I have always had XP refer to my drive as either a CD drive or a ROM drive - depends on how it feels as to which label the drive is called. However, DSE (the retailer) assure me the drive definitely is a DVD Writer. I think after reading the above that maybe John didn't install a needed driver so I'm away to read Pavid's and Archangel's links. Thank you both for this. I bought an external DVD writer but it would be wonderful to get the internal writer working. And, I often find that XP refers to this external DVD Writer as a CD writer too until I put a DVD into it which then has XP referring to it correctly as a DVD RW.

By the way, the laptop is an ASUS F5R.

I'm pretty sure your problem is with the upper and lower filters for your DVD and CD burners. The Microsoft support page I found should help you fix your problem. Don't worry about the page title though because the information it contains applies to your problem. I know this because I've been through this several times in the past. It has support information for both XP and Vista as well as a "FixIt" button that will do the work for you.

Basically it involves a little registry editing to remove the upper and lower filters for your burners and then rebooting. Just make sure you're careful when editing the registry and you should have no trouble at all. If you use the "FixIt" button you won't have any trouble at all but I prefer the follow along sections which is how I learned and still learn about the registry and editing it.

My CD burner seems to have somewhat of a similar problem as well. It deteriorated during the first two years of purchase and now would read absolutely nothing. It's a Sony drive, Dell bundled. I think it might be the laser...

@Archangel, what's that tab you're referring to? Any pictures of it?

Did you set or reset the little tab in the upper right corner back to dvd? Its very easy to miss.

i don't know what LG burner you have but you can see here

http://www.fixya.com/support/t2612620-lg_electronics_gsa_h10a_burner_not

JL

To me it sounds like a driver problem. I think that Windows has made an error and said that your DVD drive is NOT a DVD drive, but a CD drive. If you are on vista, I can tell you exactly what to do, but on XP I'm a little more shaky. Could you tell which of them you are, and secondly, could you go into My Computer, and right click your DVD drive, click "properties", and finally, click the Hardware tab, and tell me what it says under "Type"?

i have been using nero for awhile( seems to come with most burners)
i have 2 LG burners installed and when i updated my nero 7 They both stopped acknowledging anything DVD only reads/burns cd formats.
i have un installed everything nero as i thought that was the problem ..then i un installed the burners and all associated software .. tried reinstall nothing.. so i formatted the whole computer(twice) still nothing..
is there something i missed a setting i didnt do right or maybe even some files i need to download..relly like easy use of nero but from googling around i found info the you can only reinstall a few times( which is crappy if you format and start from scratch to try and resolve a stupid issue)

can some one please try and help me or recommend a software that doesnt install "burnrights" as i was advised that could be why it stopped