Toshiba SD-R5002 CD/DVD-RW no longer recognized as recordable

[Kevin Montgomery]

The Toshiba SD-R5002 CD/DVD-RW that came in my Sony VAIO desktop is no longer recognized as a recordable device. It was working fine and I don't know what's changed. The machine has XP Home Edition and came with EasyCD Creator. Blank DVD's are recognized and bring up the CD writer software. The message I get in EasyCD is "no compatible recordable or rewritable devices could be found on your system". I get a similar message in Windows Media Player. The properties say it is functioning fine, and it reads CD's and DVD's pefectly. Any ideas?

[confus-ed]

Hi kevin & welcome to wd forums.

My best guess on what you've said so far is that you need to be updating 'easy cd' to its latest version (from memory there's an issue along these lines) .. but that'd depend if we've added sp2 for xp somewhere inbetween - you may also need to try the 'upper & lower filters fix' mentioned in the sticky atop this forum section.

[Kevin Montgomery]

I have sp2. What would that do? There isn't any newer update for Easy Cd Creator. However, like I said, it was working fine with this software and then something changed.

[Tecumseh]

Also, read through this article: CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is not recognized as a recordable device (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316529/)

[confus-ed]

I have sp2. What would that do? ...

There's a whole load of technobabble about why sp2 'stuffs stuff up', but pretty much it comes down to lax programming & that sp2 isn't for having any of that, whilst pre sp2 things were much less stringent, & the net effect is that programs installed before sp2 aren't guranateed to be still working 100% after.

Simplest answer to eliminate that is to remove & then re-install whatever suspect product, & for how long this takes I'd give it a whirl :) (also while you are at this, having removed easy cd, use the filter load order tool, I was waffling about earlier to check that all traces of it are gone - post me a picture/write out the results & I'll tell you on that if you can't follow the instructions :))

Btw - on the link given above by Tecumseh :-..This procedure may not work in all cases. This is only a workaround in a situation where the CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is capable of functioning in Windows XP and for some reason has been misidentified - my experience is it never works, never mind 'not all cases' ! Well not after a reboot it doesn't, as that key is derived from other settings & the only time I've ever found it useful is to test writing function in a drive, but I can do that just as easily & more reliably by transfering the cd/dvd to a known working system.

[Kevin Montgomery]

Thanks for the advise. I managed to find a newer update for my burning software and tried this before resorting to anything more serious. It fixed the problem.

[confus-ed]

..managed to find a newer update for my burning software ... It fixed the problem.

Lovely :thumbs:, judicious updates are often required to fix all them other updates ! :devil: