DVD-RW not recognising blank disk

i'm having the same problem...

i can say that SONY just sucks. Everything I have ever had has had stupid fukkin shit happen to it. Walkmans that just stopped playing, clumsy and difficult to use MD players, a standalone dvd-vcr recorder that wouldn't go to it's 'menu' page (therefore making it useless)...

the solution: go buy yerself a new burner and make sure it's not a SONY...

that's what i'm going to do.

Had exactly the same problem.
Firstly check that your firmware is up to date, it should be Version 1.06, see if that works. If it doesnt i suspect that your DMA is switched off, in which case you need to go into device manager and change from pio into dma if availble, that will almost certainly be
the problem, if you don't get any joy try to burn a disc and when it fails save the failure log and post it to Plextor.be and ask them to look into it but i suspect that you DMA is switched to off.

David.

I have just had the same proble. Removed any DVD & Voila!!

If the drive reads commercial CDs and DVDs and your software is configured correctly then I would suspect media or the drive itself.

1) Buy a good optical drive cleaning kit, clean and retest.

2) Buy some of the DVD media the manufacturer recommend and run tests with that since they will suspect the media as well. Also make sure you purchase media that is certified for the recording speed of your drive as well. Physically check both sides of the blank disk for gouges or scratches. When you run your test don?t assume every piece of media you have is good. I?ve had as many as three in a row fail to be recognized before I get a good one. Yep, this even happens with the top of the line brands on occasion.

3) Check your burning software and make sure you have the right drive set to be the target drive. If you have multiple optical drives on your PC don?t assume you know the correct drive letter, test it. Sometimes things change without you knowing??

4) You can also try putting the drive in another PC (if you have that option) on the off chance something weird is going on with the cabling, power or controller.

I also had a rash of users with this type of problem a few years ago. Most of the incidents were solved by using name brand media such as HP, Maxell or Fujifilm. They were buying the really cheap, no name brands from the campus store (paying premium prices to boot). Three other users actually had defective burners which took some time to isolate since the problems were sporadic. To be honest I actually had to fib to get the manufacturer to take them back but once the new drive was installed the problems never reappeared.

It has been found that installation of ANYDVD creates conflict (not known how) and does not allow DVD-R/RW or DV+R/RW disks to not even be recognized by the DVD writer. Uninstalling ANYDVD solves the problem. This I had posted in CDFreaks Forum and also in rpc1 forum almost 2 years ago.

I had this same problem and it drove me crazy. I'll pass along what worked for me
for future generations to make use of.

It turns out that some software which came bundled with my pc was conflicting
with 3rd party dvd burn programs. The software was *for* dvd burning, though
it had not created a folder in the start menu.

Do a windows search of look under program files for CYBERLINK folder,
I don't know if uninstalling it will help with other programs, but it worked fine for
burning dvd's so I didn't want to mess with anything.