Hi All,

First time posting, so bear with me!!
A friend asked me to format and re-install XP Pro on his PC for him, something I've done on his and many other PCs before.
Not a problem I thought.
But, after doing just that............
Windows now recognises that he has a CD-RW, but only a DVD-R ( he has a CD-RW and a DVD-RW !)
Secondly, when we try to burn anything (using the CD-RW) the process reaches the end, takes at least 10 minutes to finalise the disc, but when we try to play or explore it, its as if there's nothing on the disc.
The DVD-R (RW!) just doesn't seem to recognise any disc.
I've used a couple of different apps to burn such as Nero and Jet Audio, but both turn out the same.
I've formatted and reinstalled again, but with the same problem.
His PC is running XP Pro, AMD 1800+, 256 DDR

All help gratefully received

Thanks
Andy

BTW, I've posted this in a couple of other areas as I'm not really sure where to put it - hardware or software????

Welcome to the forums, I have deleted your other two posts - this should be the right area for this post.

It sounds like you may have some jumper issues.

First of all how many hard drives do you have connected:

If you have one hard drive then follow these instructions:

Connect the CD-RW to the same IDE controller as the hard drive, make sure you set the CD-RW jumper to "slave"
Then connect the DVD-RW to the secondary IDE cable and set the jumper to "Master"

If you have two hard drives connected follow these instructions:

You may need to try it two different ways, either:

A)
? ? ?-? ?Connect both hard drives to the same IDE channel, set the boot drive to master and the other to slave
? ? ?-? ?Connect the CD-RW and DVD-RW to the secondary IDE channel but make sure the DVD-RW is set to master and CD-RW is slave

B)?
? ? ? -? ?Connect the CD-RW to the first IDE channel along with the boot drive, set the CD-RW to "slave"
? ? ? -? ?Connect the DVD-RW to the secondary IDE channel but make sure the DVD-RW is set to "master" and the other drive is set to "slave"


Option (B) would probably work better if you have 2 hard drives connected.

Let us know if this helps or you have anymore questions

Thanks for your suggestion, but still no joy.
I've also uninstalled both drivers, allowed XP to install it's own - no luck.
I've d/loaded new firmware and installed that - no luck.
The CD-RW says its writing to the disc, but when it comes to close of finalise the compilation it takes an age, and when opened on a CD player or through My Computer, the disc shows blank.
Do you think it likely that its a software problem as both drives were working fine before the format?

A bit more info, I've come to the conclusion that the CD-RW has had it. I tried it in my PC and it did the same. I then tried mine in my friends and mine worked perfectly.
The problem I'm having now is that my friends PC won't recognise his DVD-RW as a DVD-RW. However, when installed in my PC it does.
The strange thing is, it will copy DVDs and burn then using Nero!!!
However, it won't recognise anything except DVDs, such as CD-R, CR-RW and CD-ROM, and won't burn them either.
Do I need some kind of decoder??

Maybe try to uninstall the DVD from device manager, then restart the computer and let windows reinstall it.

Really Weird...............
Updated the DVD's Firmware - no joy
Updated the PC'S BIOS - no joy
Installed SP2 - works perfectly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dunno what went on there,

Thanks for your help anyway!!!!!!

Good job Segandy