Just Joined/DVD-R troubles

[BloodyRepaer]

Hello to who ever read's this, My name's Trevor and I'm a senior in High school. I graduate this year, I'm gonna be attending college at the FVTC for computer technician as my major and then game design and programmer as my minor's.
Busy schedule right? I'm an employee at Little caesar's pizza (mmmm...pizza).

Anyways I purchased A lightscribe DVD-R/CD-R drive this past winter and lately it will not let me burn DVD's. I've used it to burn many DvD's and it currently let's me read DVD's and CD's as well as burning CD's but I can no longer write DvD's. any suggestions on how to fix dilemma would be appreciated.

[LTR12101B]

The first two things that come to mind (since it does still write CD) are either that the laser for burning DVD has failed, or that you have a new batch of media that the drive does not like.

Any feedback from the program when it fails, is it not finding a blank disk at all, or starting and then failing?

It is possible that other software may be interfering, software which masks the presence of writable media for game backups and the like, can also prevent writing programs from detecting vaild media.

[BloodyRepaer]

It say's there is no blank disk in the drive and that I need to insert one, and as for the software I haven't added any new software on my computer since it was working unless and old app is starting to conflict since an update. I have no idea how I would check to see which software is conflicting though because i have most software except xfire and Steam on when writing a Disk

[LTR12101B]

Try DVD Identifier - DVD Identifier - Your DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray Companion
If that can see and identify media, it may narrow things down - may also be worth comparing what it shows for the media you have now, with some that was already written.

Might be worth trying IMGBURN - The Official ImgBurn Website

It's pretty basic, self contained and therefore skips around some issues that can interfere with more complex programs such as Nero.

My gut reaction is that the drive has a partial failure, or if you have different disks now, it doesn't like them, though most drives will try lowest spped and deliver a miserable result on media that doesn't suit them.

[BloodyRepaer]

personally I think it's the partial failure but ill try the idea's you've posted. plus i figured instead of just buying one right away I should get someone with a bit more knowledge on disk drive's opinion before just scrapping this one

[LTR12101B]

Due to the many ways things can screw up, the only 100% solid test is to a suspect drive in a known good or minimal software setup, or to verify possible software issues with a known good drive.

If you have an old system, maybe transfer the drive to it.

As for partial failures, I had a DVD-ROM drive that ended up only able to read CD, and don't seem to have put enough workload through any of my writers to see them wear out, but then I've always been a pretty rocksolid supporter of the twin drive setup, a reader to do all the loading and playing, and the writer saved for write/rewrite only - though with the current prices, replacing a writer is not the pain that it used to be.

Only other thing I can think of, if you have a 2 drive setup, is maybe to load a Live-CD Linux on one drive, and try to write the other using Linux's burning program - that would rule out any problems with Windows software and drivers.