HP 300n DVD Writer

Hey wassup. i have this old hp 300n dvd writer that kinda went dead. its the same drive from another computer i was troubleshooting awhile ago. i happened go grab it to use in my comp, just because u needed a dvd burner and didnt have the spare cash to dish out. it reads cds and burns cd-r's but not cd-rw. it reads only video dvds as far as i can tell, i have yet to confirm this. it will not write to dvds or read any other dvd other than that particular video dvd, which so happens to be superman doomsday movie. my system has been completely reformatted, funny story by the way. ive installed the firmware updates, different burning programs, and aspi drivers, i tried to unistall and reinstall it but no dice. other people who had the same problem seemed to fix it, so why cant I. i would like to think that this drive is salvagable so any possible solution would be much appreciated. thanks

System Specs

Emachines T2824
Windows XP Media Centre 2005 SP2
2.53 ghz Intel Celeron D Processor
1 gig of ram
40 gig harddrive

i have completely updated the system through ms update, so everythings up to date

The first thing to do is to check what media it can handle. Is it plus R or minus R? What burning rates is it supposed to support?

When you insert a blank DVD (correct =/- format) does the system actually recognise it or do you get the "insert disk/media" message?

Try this tool to check things out:

http://www.dvdinfopro.com/

I believe that it still has formatting tools or just take the media to another machine and format it there before you try to burn it. Try this on the RW and the DVDs.

Also try to get hold of some OLD DVD and CD RW media. That would be 2.4x
and 1~4x. I have seen old drives that won't handle modern media, even though the specs imply that they should.

hey thanks for the quick response.

its supposed to read and write cd-r and cd-rw, cd sao/raw and cd tao, and dvd+r, dvd+r dl, and dvd+rw. when i insert a blank dvd+r it autoplays, but it can only be a dvd+r it hasnt read from before, e.g. if i reinsert the same dvd it wont auto play. ive noticed that when i insert a blank dvd the drive changes to a cd drive, even though its a dvd

with dvdinfo i checked the media info on all the dvds i inserted. it returns no media inserted, except for the superman dvd, that acually displays info about the media. its not until i try and run the crc read error test that it stops reading it. however when i switch the interface from stpi to aspi the drive auto plays rather quickly, infact almost instantly. after the switch to aspi dvdinfo cannot detect any media. but windows does ( at first windows couldnt detect it either but after a few more attempts it now reads the disk eve after the switch).

when i run the crc test the media info changes, after the switch to aspi and back, however, recovers the info.

i havent gotten around to checkin older dvds just yet, but im gonna run some more test just to confirm a few things.

thanks