Possible Inspiron E1505 CD Drive Problems

Hey, I'm a new member here, I registered just now to see if anyone here could help me -I am at my wits end and don't know much about computers and have no idea what's wrong with mine right now.

Ok, so I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 with Windows Vista. I got it about two years ago. I recently had the motherboard replaced and bought a new adapter. That had previously been the only trouble I ever had out of this computer.

Right now though, for the past month or so, I have had trouble burning music files to certain cd-r brands. I don't know if this is a problem with my cd/dvd burner drive or with the software I'm using -Roxio 9.

I use to be able to burn to cd-r regardless of brand, no problems whatsoever. Then when I tried to burn to Sony cd-r's about a month ago, the cd would eject and Roxio would say that there was an error and that it couldn't finish burning (and every song except the second to last one would have burned by this point).

I didn't freak out. I figured that for whatever reason, Sony just no longer worked for me. But then it started doing the exact same thing to Memorex cd-r's, tdk, HP, you name it. The only brand that it wasn't regularly rejecting was Maxell. I wasn't sure what to think about this, but I decided to just go buy a bunch of Maxell cd-r's, use those, and hope for the best.

Well, then I had trouble even finding Maxell cd-r's. I went everywhere in town (I live close to what I'd consider a medium sized city), and when I ended up at Staples, I just told the store manager about my trouble with burning cd-r brands. She introduced me to a clerk at the store that she claimed was very knowledgeable about computers and after explaining my problem to him, he suggested that either my hard drive or my optical drive was going out.

This was when I freaked out. My dad has a friend who is pretty knowledgeable about hard drives and after talking to him yesterday, he told me that he didn't think it was my hard drive going out, but more likely my optical drive. But he said that he wasn't sure about that, because he'd never experienced problems with his before, so he didn't know how to help me.

I tried googling and even asking over at Yahoo! Answers about this, but have been unable to find out anything that might help me. I'd greatly appreciate any help or insight or advice that any of ya'll might have for me.

Is this indeed an issue with my drive? Or perhaps Roxio (to clarify, the only other burn program that I have is Windows Media Player itself, but I never use it because it always gives me this strange clicking sound between tracks that is very annoying, so I have always used Roxio)? Or worse, my hard drive in general???

 

I'd say, for the price of a CD (which is next to nothing), I'd give windows media player a go at burning a CD. If it works, then you know it's the software.

I suspect though that it is in fact your optical drive beginning to give up the ghost. Two years of use isn't bad; I go through them like you wouldn't believe.

But it could have been a windows update or something that has caused Roxio to stop working.

 

Don't really see how it could be your hard disk, for one. If you do want to try windows media player, try changing the settings for gapless playback (change it to gapless if it's not on that already, change it to one second if it is already on gapless).

On another note, the drives used on these computers are really flaky - mine developed a vibration and refuses to burn DVD's, and is really picky about CD's. It's quite likely that this has gone bad - replacing this should be around $30.

Also, try imgburn, which is free software for burning cd's, and is very reliable. You'll need to make an image of the audio disc (an .iso file), but it's dead easy to burn it from there.