DVD burner: "waiting for the target disc"

Minky2Slice

Right... I have all the willpower in the world, but I am so frustrated at the moment. I have been trying (for weeks) to copy/ burn some photos onto DVD without any success.

I am using a Dell desktop, with Windows XP. In My Computer, my drive is called: DVD/CD-RW Drive

The most annoying thing is, I have actually burned some photos onto DVD on this same PC once before (although it was a while ago!). I can read the previously burned dvds perfectly well...

I used Nero BurnLite10, and dvd's from the same pack, and for the life of me can't work out why they won't burn.

I keep on getting the same error: "Waiting for the target disc" or something along the lines of "Insert disc", when there is a disc in there already.
I am not very techie (girl here ) and have asked numerous people for help with no luck...

I am guessing I am missing some software or something for the burner to work maybe?

If anyone can suggest anything that works, I will love them forever lol

Minky2Slice

Hi fwor,
I don't have an audio CD with me to try. Have just put a DVD in there and pc recognises it, but won't play it, the message says:
"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed in your computer" - is that the problem maybe?

danthemoneysavingman

would you : open device manager, click the arrow next to DVD/CD rom drives, and put here what it says? then help you we can :-)

Spank

Are you sure it burnt DVDs? DVD/CD-RW usually means that it will only read DVDs & burn CDs

googler

Look at the faceplate of the drive. Does it say DVD-ROM on it? If it does, it's designed to read DVDs only, not write to them. The 'ROM' stands for Read Only Memory.

If it doesn't have DVD-ROM on it, what does it have?

Minky2Slice

Hi danthemoneysavingman,

In device manager its has something thats says:
DVD/CD-ROM drivesand underneath that: HL-DT-ST-CDRW/DVD GCC4244

Does that mean anything?

googler

It appears to be a Hitachi, and I'm afraid it appears to be be a DVD-ROM drive, judging by this page and a few others ... references to DVD-ROM therein.

Search for "GCC4244 drive" in google....

Minky2Slice

googler wrote: »

It appears to be a Hitachi, and I'm afraid it appears to be be a DVD-ROM drive, judging by this page and a few others ... references to DVD-ROM therein.

Search for "GCC4244 drive" in google....

oh dear... Didnt think that was possible, as I had definitely used it before Only thing i can think is that my ex (works in IT, so knows a lot more than me!) swapped it or something without me realising before I moved out as we had a couple of desktop pc's.

Thanks for helping though!

SteveJH200

New multi drives are not expensive though - £15 to £20 depending whether it's IDE or SATA

fwor

Minky2Slice wrote: »

I don't have an audio CD with me to try. Have just put a DVD in there and pc recognises it

Sorry - I deleted my answer (while you were replying to it) because I re-read your OP and saw that I had missed where you said that it can read the DVD that you wrote before - so my question wasn't relevant.

Anyway, looks like you have an answer - a replacement which will write DVDs as well as read should be less than £20, and they are dead easy to fit.

Or a cheaper option would be to burn the photos onto a CD-R, which it looks like the existing drive will write. You should get quite a lot of photos on a CD-R.

Minky2Slice

Thanks for your help guys!! Much appreciated! I thought my only option was to buy a new laptop! Certainly can't afford one at the moment as i have one but its small so only has an external drive, and I dont think it can even burn CD's!
I will definitely go have a look tomorrow for a new drive, didnt realise they would be that cheap. I might be on here again tomorrow asking how to install it lol. IT is not one of my strong points, but I do try. I don't know anyone else that can help me, so I am determined to figure it out on my own. Good thing I came on here, as there are always so many helpful people around :-)