DVD writing problem with HP laptop

I have a HP Pavillion dv5215 laptop and the DVD burner has never worked as far as I can tell and is unfortunately just out of warranty. It is able to read and burn CD's and play DVD's.

When I go to the drive in Explorer it says "DVD-RAM Drive (E " but as soon as I put in a blank DVD it changes to "CD Drive (E " and indicates no free space in properties.

I am using Windows Media Player for burning. The drive is mftg. by LG/Hitachi and model number is HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4084N

Based on some other recommendations I have: removed the upper and lower filters, tried 3 different brands of dvd, uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and made sure it was set for DMA mode. None have worked.

Any suggestions for this problem? Thank you for your assistance.

 

Go to Start>Run type in Regedit and click OK. Using the navigation on the left hand side, go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Then, on the right hand side, click on "upperfilter" and "lowerfilter" and delete them both. Then save, and restart your computer.

Did that fix it?

 

Budding, Thanks for your quick reply. As mentioned in my email I had already removed the upper and lower filter from the registry (Microsoft's customer service site had suggested doing this). I just double-checked and they have indeed been removed from the registry and did not change situation.

Any other suggestions. Thanks.

 

You could try the modified RPC1 firmware: http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_file.php?site=tdb1&file=4084NKQ9.ZIP

Note that firmware and drivers are totally different things.

 

I tried the firmware update for the HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4084N. Downloaded the zip and when I ran it got a message that said "Upload and burn fail". And still nothing has changed.

And just to be clear, laptop is not recognizing any blank DVD's I put in the machine. Have tried both Sony DVD-R and Maxell DVD+R. It plays movie DVD's just fine and can read and write CD's fine.

Thanks for your help. Any other suggestions?

 

Erm...you are aware that you have to be in Safe Mode in order to update DVD firmware right? To go to Safe Mode, go to Start and search for msconfig if you're in Vista. Launch it and click on the BOOT.INI tab, and check the /SAFEBOOT checkbox. Then click APPLY and restart.

 

No, I was not aware of the need to be in Safe Mode. I tried again in Safe Mode and while the update worked, it did not correct the situation. Darn.

Any other suggestions? Thanks again.

 

I suppose you could always try and see if you can burn with a different application. Try out a trial version of Nero http://www.nero.com/eng/downloads-nero8-trial.php or ImgBurn http://www.imgburn.com/

 

Since I'm not even getting to the point where I run the burn software (a blank DVD is not even recognized when running Explorer), I don't believe different software will work here.

Seems like it may be a hardware issue afterall. I may just get an external dvd burner for now.

Any other suggestions? If not, thanks for your help.

 

You could also consider replacing the optical drive. Any of these should fit but you may need to swap the bezel and any fixing brackets. The other thing to check is that the optical drive is not sharing an IDE channel with the hard disk (in which case master / slave/ cable select become a possible issue).

John