Dying CD Writers
 

Among the computers that I husband I have two CD writers that no longer write.

One won't touch CR-RW and fails after a few hundred megabytes on CD-W claiming dirty disk, etc etc. This unit has a few years on it but has had little use.

The other appears to write CD-RW but trashes the disk. This unit, in a Dell, has only been used for recording for 18 months or so, and only once a week for maybe fifty megabytes each time.

The offending drive here at home will read CDs OK. IIRC, the one at the other location will as well.

Any suggestions?

seacue

Yes! In a word, ebay. I had a dvd writer fail on me a month ago, so I bought the same model on ebay, and paid £17 for it including the postage.

As the writer was about 3 years old, it took a week for one to come up, but I could have bought a latest model one for about £40 - £45.

If you want to know the model, and have XP, open the file explorer, right click the drive, click properties and then click the hardware tab. This should show you the model number.

Without even owning a CD writer of any type, I would respectfully ask if you have yet run a head-cleaning cd in the applicable drive(s)?

Thanks for the suggestions - but I was hoping for a silver bullet....