cd/dvd burner problems

[chiefgenius]

hi

im having some problems with burning cds. i have a 52x cdrw drive and a dvdrw drive. ive tried burning in both, but nothing works. but heres what happens. if i use nero, it goes through everything, but it wont let me burn becuase it says theres no disk in the drive. so i tried restarting and stuff, but i get the same problem for both drives. so i tried upgrading my firmware, and also the same problem. then i tried 4 different brands of cd media i have, all various speeds also, and none of them were recognized. however, i put an old data cd i had burned in, and i used the integrated windows burning stuff, and it recognized all the files on there, and it let me add files on, and then burn those files to the disk. and i tried a blank disk that was the same as that one, but it also didnt work. so it seems my problem is that the computer can not recognize blank cds. ive never heard of this problem and i have no idea how to fix it. does anyone have any suggestions?

please note i am using winxp sp2, yet, ive have similar problems under sp1, and ive talked with other people using sp2 and they havent had problems burning cds

[chiefgenius]

ok, well, now i tried buring an audio cd using windows media player, and when it went through, i had the blank cd in there, but on a little top bar it said insert blank cd, but when i went to burn it, it worked. so this makes me think, is recognizing a blank cd a function of software? meaning that my nero is messed up? but things still dont seem to work quite right, if you have ideas, thanks for your input

[TechHead]

Uninstall and reinstall Nero? Is your System ASPI up to date? Download and install ForceASPI from aspi.radified.com.
Also try other burning apps, like BurnAtOnce (freeware), and/or Easy CD Creator, RecordNowMax.

[chiefgenius]

hmm, yeah, uninstalling and reinstalling nero didnt work, nor did installing the forceaspi or the adaptec aspi. ill try other burning apps. but there must be some problem, because nero always worked fine for me before.

[Ice Czar]

try simplifying the physical config
just one drive as master
and a different cable
verify DMA mode

obvious but often overlooked, there maybe a signal issue
easy to rule out

update\reload the chipset\busmaster driver (IE for VIA the Hyperion 4 in 1)

in the full config, if master slave try cable select or vis versa