CD-R/RW - Reads but wont write

Hi all,
I have a Ricoh MP600A CD R/RW burner that will read any CD, but won't write. I have tried it on two machines (a 900mHz Duron using an Asus A7V-E mother board and a 300mhz PII, but not sure of mb) to the same result. It wont start burning complaining that the burning medium is either not ready or of the wrong type. This only accounts for about 25% of the unsuccessful burns. The others it accepts the disc, but rejects the burn command or something.

Both machines are using Microsoft Windows XP pro. Although i dont think the problem lies within the operating system because it burnt successfully once before it decided to stop writing. I have tried several different burning products to the same outcome. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. My thought is that it is a hardware error, although i might be overlooking something.

Like i said, it reads perfectly, just wont burn.

Thanks in advance.

Had the same problem with my Ricoh MP7060A - tried all the usual including a full re-install of Win98se, updating firmware, different media, both Nero and Adaptec software - no go on anything. Mine got progressively worse over a period of about 6 weeks. It started rejecting the media, saying it was bad, then got a few buffer underruns, then a few discs that finished but with errors and then it gave up altogether as far as writing goes. Just errors on every blank i put in it now, saying bad media. Like yours though, it works fine as a CDROM still, which is what i use it for now. I've just bought a Plextor 24/10/40A to replace it and i'm over the moon with it :-)

New firmware for the burner?