[joseliseo]

Hi everyone. I am not a tech savy person at all so please be gentle with me. I am having a problem with my dvd burner. I have a phillips dvd burner that came with my dell computer about five years ago. I have had little to no problems with it other than the odd cleaning, well until now!
Well here is the problem. I can watch and play dvds on it but I can't burn a dvd with it! The porgrams I use to convert and burn will convert the clip to a dvd product but they won't recognize the dvd burner. I use ConvertXtoDVD and EasyDVDCreator. To make sure that it wasn't just the programs I uninstalled both programs and even installed DVD Decryptor which I use to use. All three can't find the burner. In My Computer the burner shows up as CD Drive. I have one CD Rom which is never in use and a DVD Burner and both show as a CD Drive.
I need some help. I would like to know what I can do to the computer before I go out and buy a new burner!
Thanks for reading in advance!

[Bubba]

Look for the part number or the model number. Google it. There is a firmware update that is several years old that was probably never done. I had the same problem with my daughters computer, (Dell, roughly the same age, PROBABLY the same Phillips burner), once I found the firmware and updated it, it worked fine. I don't know WHY it decided to quit when it did, years after the update came out, but it did and that fixed it. Let me know if that works.

EDIT: LOL I remembered I replaced the DVD later and have it in front of me. Mine is DVD8631/95. Here is a link to a forum (the thread is from 2005 lol) and in the second post on the thread, SirQUK provides a link for the firmware update you will need if your model is the same. I'd just provide a direct link, but his opens directly to the firmware update, not a page.

http://www.cdr-zone.com/forum/about2729.html

[Bubba]

If the above doesn't work try this link. I just did it on another computer and it worked great.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929461